Guppy correctly figured this meant we didn’t know shit about the Internet. He therefore gave us a brief rundown on web sites, chat rooms, and the like. It all seemed pretty detached and dehumanizing to me. MacClough was less put off, but failed to see the point.
“The point, John,” Guppy said, “is that you can pick any subject, not nearly any subject, but any subject and you will find someone, maybe thousands of people on-line interested in the same subject. Pick a subject.”
“Men who have sex with barnyard animals,” MacClough blurted out.
“And the women who love them,” I added.
Guppy was too busy massaging the keyboard to laugh. “There. Please, watch the screen.”
As he scrolled the list of alternative sex discussion groups by us, John and I stared in amazement at the seemingly endless variations. And while scanning the section on barnyard animals, Guppy stopped the scroll and pointed out a particular group.
“There, Mr. Klein, are the women who love them. Would you like to go into a chat room?”
“So,” I interrupted, “what’s the point? What’s any of this got to do with the price of potatoes in Yemen?”
“Isotope, Klein,” MacClough answered.
“Exactly, John,” Guppy praised. “Though not so many as alternative sex groups, there are many many drug-related sites on the Internet. And out of these, many deal exclusively with Isotope. And what is the one tangible fact Zak and I had to work with?”
“That Valencia Jones was arrested for carrying a very large quantity of Isotope.”
“Exactly, Mr. Klein, exactly. And because the quantity was so huge, Zak and I assumed the people who had planted these hallucinogenics in Miss Valencia’s car were not, I believe the phrase is, nickel-and-dime dealers. In these times, smart business people, sophisticated business people-criminal or legitimate-are heavily tapped into the worldwide net. Careful monitoring of the Internet is crucial for the success of any enterprise which services people thirty years of age and under.”
“You set them up,” MacClough interjected. “I don’t know how you did it, but you set them up. You knew they’d be watching.”
“We hoped so,” Guppy aped Zak’s earlier sentiment. “And now we know they were.”
Over nearly a tenth-month span, Guppy and Zak had spent several hours a day, seven days a week, leaving cryptic messages in every drug-related chat room on the Internet. The early messages were fairly brief, meant simply to attract attention:
We know. Love Valencia.
And they would repeat the messages over and over again, whenever they had the opportunity to interact. Gradually, they had expanded the length and the depth of their messages:
We know the truth. Love Valencia. P.S. You pay one way or the other. Have figured out your system. Love Valencia. Have downloaded. Have disc. You will pay either way.
Clock is ticking. Tick. .Tick. .Tick. Paying me is the trick. Love Valencia. Will testify to sink your ship. Will need six figures to seal my lips.
They carried on like this, never knowing whether anyone was there to listen. But since Jeffrey had turned the case down and Zak saw no other alternative to taking things into his own hands, he and Guppy kept it up. Then, as the trial date approached, they went on the offensive, hinting as to their identity:
You will see I am real when myself I will conceal. Love Valencia. When a Riversborough student disappears you will know your greatest fears. Remember, ships and lips and figures times six.
Zak and Guppy had an accomplice that we hadn’t figured on: Valencia Jones’ lawyer. To protect her client, the lawyer had even kept her complicity a secret from Valencia Jones. That explained the lawyer’s absence when MacClough and I went to see Valencia Jones in the Mohawkskill jail. But her most important contribution to Zak and Guppy’s plan was to add Zak’s name to the defense witness list the day after he was reported missing. Only then, after revealing himself, could Zak know if anyone had been reading their messages.
They were unfortunately underwhelmed by the response; there wasn’t any. But having never truly entertained the possibility of failure, they had painted themselves into a rather precarious corner. Zak and Guppy had no way of knowing whether their months of messages had gone unread by the people for whom they were intended. That prospect was difficult enough to swallow and meant Valencia Jones was as good as convicted. There was, however, a second possibility, a possibility far more bone-chilling. It dawned upon them that their messages might very well have been received, but that their adversaries were simply lying in wait. After all, now the Isotope dealers knew Zak’s identity, but Zak and Guppy were still fumbling around in the dark, tilting at shadows without faces.
That’s where their plan had gone awry. They had hoped to somehow set up a meeting with the dealers and alert the police. But when there was no immediate response to Zak’s name mysteriously showing up on the witness list, they supposed they were dead in the water. Zak, his life now possibly in danger, thinking his bluff had been called, had no reasonable choice but to remain in hiding until the completion of Valencia Jones’ trial. Brave and resourceful as he and Guppy were, they failed to see the value in Valencia Jones’ conviction and getting themselves killed.
Instead of completely giving up the ship, they continued to fill up the Isotope chat rooms with their messages:
Revealed and still concealed. Love Valencia. Don’t be shy, I won’t be. I’ll bring your house down, you will see.
You’ve called my bluff. You think I am not tough. Love Valencia. Six figures is no longer enough.
Think I’m scared, we shall see. That disc is what’s important, silly, not me. Tick. .Tick. .Tick.
Still nothing. Then Zak remembered a weird thing from a trial he’d seen on TV. Evidence for possible future use was handed to the court in a sealed envelope. It wasn’t actually entered into evidence, but was kept by the court for later introduction. Whether the evidence was admissible or not would be argued if and when the envelope was unsealed and its contents offered to the court. The next day, Valencia Jones’ lawyer delivered a sealed brown envelope into the trial judge’s hands. That night Zak and Guppy put out the following message:
Going once. Going twice. No more playing nice. Love Valencia. Disc in envelope is a fake. Mine is real. Make no mistake and make the deal. The clock stops ticking soon.
It worked, though Zak and Guppy didn’t know it, not right away. On the night they sent that message, Detective Caliparri left Riversborough for the second and final time. His visit hadn’t gone unnoticed. Although his visit had been basically innocent and completely fruitless, the Isotope dealers remembered Caliparri’s first visit and his nosing around about Valencia Jones on behalf of Jeffrey Klein. Much to Caliparri’s eventual detriment, the dealers had put two and two together and come up with five. Apparently, they had found the timing of Zak’s message about the disc, the delivery of the mystery envelope to the judge, and Caliparri’s brief return to Riversborough too great a coincidence to dismiss. Somehow, they had gotten the misguided notion that Zak had passed the real evidence-which, of course, was not real at all-on to Caliparri for safekeeping. And when Caliparri could not produce the disc, he was whacked for his trouble.
“You see, gentlemen,” Guppy said, “once the detective was killed, there could be no turning back. We knew then that they had been reading our messages all along. What we hadn’t counted on was murder.”
“What did you think they were going to do if you ever had a meeting,” I sneered, “kiss you on the lips?”
“We hadn’t thought things out that far.”
“They would’ve tortured the truth out of the one of you they got and killed the pair of ya,” MacClough shook his head disapprovingly. “You two guys were real smart about this plan. I mean that. But this ain’t the kinda game with rules and it’s been my experience that civilians don’t fare well against killers in those games. And just in case you haven’t been keeping score lately, it’s them that got us by the balls. Remember, my old pal here,” he slapped my shoulder, “is facing the hangman’s needle.”