Tank used his phone to take photographs of the bodies.
“No pictures,” said Carlos Cantu. “You know the rules.”
“I’m not putting it on YouTube.”
“Erase them. Please.”
“I can’t do that. Not this time.”
Cantu blocked the door, arms crossed. Tank freed two more twenties from his money clip and extended them, something between a bribe and a peace offering. Cantu took the bills.
“Burning your bridges, Tank.”
“This may be the last one I’m crossing.”
25
Carlos Cantu returned to the icebox to put away the bodies. Forty years old and taking bribes to make ends meet. Not quite the way he’d expected things to turn out.
He slid the trays into their lockers and cleaned up the room, remembering the sunny afternoons at Royal Stadium, the burnt-orange jerseys running up and down the field, eighty thousand wildly cheering fans filling the stands, the old siege cannon firing after every touchdown.
The good ol’ days.
Cantu laughed dispiritedly. He’d been too much of a runt to play, but he’d enjoyed being a trainer. It had been his dream to become a doctor, but he’d dropped out senior year to look after his mother, who was ill. Time passed. His mother died. He’d never stopped wanting to be a doctor, or even a physical therapist. Somehow he never managed to get a degree.
Finished cleaning up, Carlos turned off the lights and locked the door. He checked that all the offices were empty and that he was the last to leave. On his way out he stopped at his desk. Unlocking his file drawer, he took out a zip-lock bag containing a wallet, a gold bracelet, and a wristwatch. He’d lied to Tank. It had been his job to bag the informant’s valuables. Dutifully he placed the man’s wallet and bracelet into an evidence bag and sealed it. He kept the watch for himself. It was a Patek Philippe. Swiss. Perpetual calendar. Eighteen-karat gold. Crocodile strap. Retail price $126,000, according to a site on the Net. He hoped to auction it off for no less than half that amount.
He turned it over in his hand. There were initials engraved on the back of the case.
“To H.S. Thanks, I.”
26
Mary Grant was coming to life before his eyes. Image by image. Pixel by pixel.
Not a picture of her. Ian Prince had no practical interest in her physical appearance. Standing in the center of his office at a few minutes before ten p.m., he was looking into her true self, her life as defined by her activity online.
Ian was having Mary Margaret Olmstead Grant indexed.
The office was large and airy, the size of a tennis court, with wooden floors and a vaulted ceiling. Windows offered a vista across the Meadow toward Great Tom. Ian’s gaze was not on the illuminated belfry, however, but on the holographic images that rose from knee level and formed a circular tower around him-a patchwork quilt of the web pages Mary Grant visited on a regular basis.
There was her home page at Amazon and her log-on page at Chase. There was her Facebook page and her Shutterfly account. Mapquest and Google. WebMD and Pandora. Citicards and Wells Fargo. There was the Austin American-Statesman and the New York Times. Huffington Post and Drudge Report. Yet another showed the portal to her health insurance company. Some of the pages were recent, as reported by the tap put on the Grant family’s online access earlier in the day. But more had come from her browsing history.
Another panel showed pages linked to her Social Security number. These included her credit report, mortgage information, home equity line of credit (from Sacramento), and federal tax information as reported to the IRS.
It was simplicity itself to retrieve the information. All ONE servers were powered by software containing a collection filter that Ian alone was able to access. The filter looked for all manner of personal data, everything from phone numbers to credit card numbers to Social Security numbers, and once found, stored it permanently. Ninety-one percent of all traffic on the Internet passed through a server, router, or switch manufactured by ONE.
He touched a screen hovering in front of his nose. The portal to the Austin American-Statesman opened. He noted that she’d been reading the article about her husband. Nothing strange there. He touched the screen and it shrank to its original size.
Next he looked at Mary Grant’s account at Chase Bank. Until he had a password, he could not go deeper. Likewise, he could not access her detailed credit card records or her insurance accounts.
Ian touched the screen and the page shrank to its original size.
For now, Mary Grant’s index was a precaution. If and when she became a threat, he would obtain her passwords. It would not be difficult. He would dig deeper. The circular tower would grow to contain hundreds of web pages. He would know everything Mary Grant had done in the past and everything she was doing in the present.
Most important, he would know everything she would do in the future.
27
It was late. The girls were asleep. Or at least Grace was. Jessie no doubt was on her laptop, doing whatever she did until all hours. Mary padded downstairs to Joe’s office. She had on her sweats and one of Joe’s Georgetown T-shirts. He was in her thoughts constantly, so much so that she felt almost as if he were still alive, only in a different form. Every doubt, he extinguished. Every fear, he allayed. She had only to say “I can’t,” for him to counter, “Of course you can.”
Mary set down her mug of tea and her iPad. Seated at his desk, she dug the boarding card out of her pocket. Her eye found the seven-digit code below his name. 7XC5111. Joe’s frequent-flyer membership number.
She called up the American Airlines web page, then selected “Rewards Program” and entered Joe’s number. A box asked for his password. She typed it in and was directed to Joe’s page.
Hon, she said to him, you’re so easy.
Mary had warned herself to be ready. Where there was smoke, there was fire. If Joe hadn’t told her about one trip to San Jose, there would be others, to either San Jose or elsewhere.
The page listed Joe’s recent trips. She began counting at the top of the page and continued through two more. Twenty-seven flights in all. She had her agenda open and ticked off each trip against her record. Many flights matched perfectly. She recalled Joe’s comments about the cases he was covering at the time. She had no qualms with those.
But many did not. There were two in November. One in December. Three in January. And so on through July.
Not just fire; a five-alarm blaze.
The phone rang. The call was from the funeral home. “Mrs. Grant, this is Horace Feely. I’m sorry to disturb you so late, but there seems to be a problem.”
Mary turned her chair away from the desk. “I’m listening.”
“To be brief, we’re unable to take possession of your husband. Usually the medical examiner releases the body after the autopsy has been performed. However, there seems to have been a delay.”
“What kind of delay?”
“In performing the postmortem. At the FBI’s request, the medical examiner has exercised his right to keep your husband’s body until such further time as decided. I would count on a week minimum.”
“A week. But-” Mary bit back her words. Anger wouldn’t change anything. She thanked the funeral director and hung up.
She put down the phone. No one had informed her that an autopsy was to be performed on her husband. What could a medical examiner find that the surgeons hadn’t? It was all part of the scheme, she realized. First Don Bennett refusing to help her retrieve Joe’s message, then Judge Caruso telling her to halt her inquiries, and now a delay of at least a week in performing the postmortem.