"You want to find a motel and start on this tomorrow morning?" Cavallaro was asking him.
Lester checked his watch. It was five o'clock. "Seems a little early," he murmured.
"Not a problem," she said immediately, with enough enthusiasm that he took her word for it. "Let me get my coat and bag and we'll head out."
It was barely a minute before she reappeared.
"I can't believe they didn't put you on a plane instead of making you drive down," she said, slipping into her coat as they crossed the lobby.
"We don't have much of a budget," he admitted.
"Really?" She looked at him. "The Vermont Bureau of Investigation? Sounds rich enough."
"Yeah-well, we're kind of new. Still muscling our way into the pack."
She turned right out of the door and headed for a parking lot to the side of the building. "Where did you work before?"
"State police."
"No kidding? Didn't like them?"
"Loved them. But I thought I was running out of options. Numbers again."
She pulled keys from her pocket and aimed toward what was clearly an unmarked cruiser-the kind of thing street kids love to decorate with "Narc," written on the dusty side panels.
"How so?" she asked.
"They hover around three hundred and fifty people in uniform, depending on the year and the budget," he told her. "Upward mobility gets tight. When the Bureau came up, it looked more interesting, less bureaucratic, and now I'm working with the field force commander. Plus, I keep all my benefits and retirement."
She was already laughing. "Three fifty? We've got almost half that in this department alone."
She unlocked the doors and they both got in, their bodies jarred by the frozen hardness of the seats. Apparently, the car hadn't been out all day.
She started it up as he changed the subject. "You said on the phone that the IP address I gave you for Mr. Rockwell was an Internet cafe. You ever have any problems with them before?"
Glenda Cavallaro shook her head. "Nope. And I checked every database we have. Nothing. Just for kicks, I also looked up N. Rockwell. There're more than a few with that name, but nothing for any cyber crime or sex stuff. That's what you're looking for, right? Child predator shit?"
"We think so," Spinney answered cautiously, looking out the side window as they pulled into traffic and headed west along Lancaster Avenue.
He watched the buildings slide by, mostly brick clad and older, few above a couple of stories tall. Soon, on the left, the view opened up, and a large, deep expanse of cold-bitten lawn appeared, with a frozen pool in the middle and a row of imposing buildings skirting its borders.
"Haverford College," Cavallaro explained. "Pretty good place."
He'd noticed it earlier, having come this way to reach the police department from the interstate. He'd also gone by both Villanova University and the village of Bryn Mawr, home to that college, where he'd also noticed dealerships for Ferrari, Hummer, and Maserati. Despite the main drag's almost pedestrian, weathered brick appearance, there was obviously serious money lurking just beyond sight, here and there.
Cavallaro snapped him from his reverie. "The cafe is up ahead." She pulled into a shopping area parking lot and killed the engine, pointing through the windshield. "Over there."
They got out and crossed the asphalt to the place she'd indicated, its windows fogged by moist heat and the presence of a sizable crowd. Spinney suddenly realized that coming at this time of the early evening was probably not a good idea. His companion, however, didn't seem fazed.
She walked up to the counter and asked to see the manager, showing just a glimpse of her shield. As they waited, Les took in their surroundings-a sprinkling of small tables, each adorned with a computer, catered to by a counter stuffed with coffee choices and sweet comestibles. Adrenaline times three, he thought, watching the largely young crowd, the majority of them men, quietly hunched over their keyboards. The room was filled with the tinny clatter of fingertips stuttering across plastic keys.
"May I help you?" a smooth voice said from behind him. "I'm the manager, Bruce Fellini."
Cavallaro was already staring at the short, goateed man in a black turtleneck who'd appeared from the back room. She displayed her shield again, along with a folded piece of paper. "I'm Detective Cavallaro of the Lower Merion PD. This is Agent Spinney of the VBI, and this"-she waved the document-"is a subpoena for the contents of one of your computers. We have reason to believe that one of your customers was using your place to sexually pursue underage girls."
She placed the subpoena in front of him. Fellini looked down at it, otherwise not moving.
"How's this work?" he finally asked. "I've never been involved in something like this before."
Both cops looked at him carefully, their instincts immediately sharpened by the line.
Spinney removed another piece of paper from his pocket before slipping out of his coat. It was hot to stifling for him in here, although he noticed that Cavallaro hadn't even unbuttoned hers yet. Cultural differences, once more.
He laid the sheet beside the subpoena and placed his finger on the line that John Leppman had highlighted in yellow, back in Vermont. "This is the computer's address, along with the time and date it was being used."
Fellini studied the line of type briefly. "Officers, I'd be happy to help. I'll show you the computer and do whatever else you'd like me to, but I gotta warn you: You're not going to find anything. Our computers get used all the time, by dozens of people a day, and that's day after day. You might get a time-date stamp somewhere from the guy you're after-I'm not saying that." He tapped the sheet of paper with his finger. "But you got that already. Otherwise, that computer's going to be blank, or covered with gibberish. We set the temp files to be overwritten immediately, and I also happen to know that the settings on that particular instant-messaging program are defaulted to wipe the record clean whenever the user exits the program. It's what we do to keep clutter to a minimum."
"So you don't want us to tear into the computer?" Cavallaro asked.
Bruce Fellini held up both his hands in surrender. "Hey, I'll even let you take the whole thing out of here, for as long as you want, if you give me some paperwork. We got insurance for things like this. I was just warning you, is all."
Spinney had lost interest in the conversation a few sentences ago and was back to surveying the room. Now he returned to the manager and asked him, "Your security camera working?"
Fellini stared at him for a blank second before his brain kicked in. "Oh, yeah. Sure."
Lester pulled out the photograph of Rockwell that they'd circulated to the newspaper, and displayed it. "This is the guy we think used your computer. He look familiar?"
The small man shrugged. "Vaguely, I guess."
"How far back do you keep the security tapes?" Lester asked next.
This time Fellini smiled, pointing to the date on Spinney's printout. "Long enough."
Chapter 18
"Butch-hand me another beer."
Willy reached over the side of his bedraggled armchair, flipped open the lid of the cooler parked on the floor, and fished around in the cold ice slurry for a can, which he then handed the older man.
E. T. took it from him, peeled back the tab with a snap, and brought it to his lips in one smooth, well-practiced gesture. He didn't put it down until it was half empty. On the wooden floor by his feet, scattered among other discarded trash, were the rattling remains of most of a twelve-pack.
They'd settled on the unfinished but enclosed back porch of E. T.'s shambles of a house, dressed in coats, accompanied by two glowing parabolic space heaters and an old sleeping dog of confused lineage.