The cabin was warm inside, a fire raging in the fireplace illuminating the space. Bishop shrugged out of his coat, settling it on a peg beside the door. “It seems that way to me. I’m not from around here. This could be perfectly normal and I wouldn’t know.”
The older woman placed a mug on the bar and gestured Bishop to join her in the kitchen. “We get one or two big storms a year. My wife and I like to refer to this as snuggle weather. So you’re Bill’s friend. Where you from? Mr. Flanders, isn’t it?”
Perhaps the lady wasn’t looking to be murdered. He’d forgotten that small towns thrived on gossip. It was on the tip of his tongue to say Houston. It sat right there in Bishop’s brain that he could talk about his house in Houston and how the cabin reminded him of his childhood. But that was Bishop’s childhood. Not Henry Flanders’s. “I’m originally from Ohio.” It was a suitable Midwestern state. His accent was flat and could be mistaken for any number of Midwestern states. “Now I work at a small university in Washington State.”
“A professor! How very nice. My name is Teeny Green. I suspect you’re looking for the boys. Logan told me he helped you out yesterday.”
Bishop was fairly certain Logan hadn’t mentioned that the help he’d provided came in the form of the bar fight.
The boys in question had started to walk down the hall. Bishop heard the door open and then the low conversation between friends. Logan emerged first, a smile on his face. The smile abruptly disappeared as he realized he wasn’t alone in the cabin. Logan took one look at Bishop standing at the bar, turned, and started back down the hall.
Seth Stark didn’t run. He put his hands on his lanky hips and attempted to stare Bishop down. “What are you doing here?”
There was a small gasp that came from Teeny Green. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the young man. “Seth, surely your momma taught you better manners than that.”
Seth didn’t back down at all. “My momma is from the Upper East Side. She doesn’t believe in manners.”
Teeny Green simply stared the young man down. After a few moments of maternal judgment, Seth sighed. “I’m sorry, Miss Teeny. Mr. Bishop, how can I help you?”
It was obvious the kid didn’t want to help, but he wasn’t going to be given a choice. “I have Nell’s computer contents on a thumb drive. I don’t have the time to go through every lead. I rather suspected that you might have some software that could cut that time down for us.”
The minute the word “software” came out of Bishop’s mouth, Seth lit up. “Hell, yeah.” There was the sound of a foot tapping against the floor. Teeny Green didn’t seem to like swearing either. “Sorry. What I meant to say was yes, Mr. Flanders. I can certainly help you with that.”
A brilliant smile came over Teeny’s face. “Well, you boys go on back to Logan’s room. I’ll bring you some cookies when they’re done.”
Bishop wondered for a moment if he’d gone down a rabbit hole. Seth turned, walking back toward the room he’d first come out of. Bishop grabbed his mug of apple cider. There was no use in wasting it. It smelled delicious, and now that he thought about it, the cookies smelled pretty good too. If he had to spend time in teenage hell, at least there were cookies.
Seth opened the door to Logan’s bedroom, and Bishop followed. Logan’s room was a temple to the chosen object of his worship. Posters lined the wall, making a tapestry of superheroes and villains, all in vivid colors. Comic books. At the last group home he’d been in, one of the boys his age had had a collection of comic books. Chris Johnson. Bishop hadn’t thought about Chris Johnson in ten years, maybe more. Though they’d been the same age, Chris hadn’t spent as much time in the system as Bishop. He’d tried to share those comic books, but by then Bishop knew there was no such thing as a superhero.
A wide-eyed Logan sat on the bottom bunk. “Dude, did you tell my mom? Because I told her we just helped you out with directions to the library. I totally did not mention the bar. I’m not supposed to go to the bar. Not just that bar in particular, but any bar. I get to go to juice bars, but not if they sell alcohol.”
It was obvious his parents kept Logan on a tight leash. “I didn’t mention the unfortunate incident. Here’s the hard drive, Seth. Now, what do either of you know about threats against Nell?”
“Are you talking about the shit bombs?” Logan asked. He giggled and then his mouth turned down. “Could you not tell my moms about the cussing?”
“Yes, I am talking about bombs of all kinds.” Did anybody take this seriously? “You know most people get scared when someone sends them a bomb in the mail.”
Seth was already sitting at the small desk, his hands flying across the keyboard. He never looked up, and Bishop realized that this was Seth Stark in his natural environment. The kid’s whole attitude had changed the minute he sat in front of that keyboard. “From what I heard, Will and Bobby said it was a lame attempt. And the bomb wasn’t full of shit. Nell has received packages of crap, but the bomb was full of…well, it was full of bomb stuff. I don’t know what really, but it wasn’t shit.”
Yeah, the kid was trying to pretend, but Bishop was pretty sure he knew exactly what he was talking about. “You should be careful or the feds will show up on your front doorstep this time.”
Logan snorted. “Dude, that happened by the time he was ten.”
Seth shrugged. “I was a curious kid. Can we get back to the problem at hand? Okay. I’ve narrowed the search parameters down to three names.”
“How the hell did you do that?” Bishop had come to get a list of anyone who had sent her a threat. He’d expected to spend days combing through her e-mails and placing potential suspects on a list.
Seth turned back, a superior grin on his face. “I built out an algorithm that matches up names, dates, and then searches the Internet for any information on those names. It then places the potential suspects in order of probability of violation. I have various filters for money lost, position at the beginning of the protest, position at the end, how many keywords they used in the various e-mails.”
Bishop could imagine what those words were. Words like “murder” and “kill” and “rape” and “die.” He’d read a couple of those e-mails, his blood pressure threatening to hit new heights. He had to be very careful about his tone and the words he used himself. “And this thing works? I’ve never heard of software that works like this.”
Seth shrugged a little. “That’s because I wrote the program. It doesn’t exist anywhere else. And it won’t tell us who did the crime. It merely gives us a list of suspects in the order of probability. And here’s our list of suspects.”
There was a low hum as the printer started up and began to work. A single sheet came out, and Seth handed it over with an arrogant smirk. “What would take the police several weeks, I managed to do overnight.”
“Overnight? I just gave you the e-mails.”
Seth snorted, a deeply arrogant sound. “Oh, I hacked her e-mail server after we finished our Battlestar Galactica marathon.”
“Dude, you can’t tell my moms about that either.” Logan seemed to have trust issues with his moms. “They told me I couldn’t commit any felonies or I won’t get the deputy job and I’ll end up having to work at Stella’s. Stella scares me, and I’ve seen what Max Harper can do to someone who gets his order wrong.”
“Why won’t you just let me pay for your college?” Seth’s eyes rolled. “Dude, my parents won’t even notice that the money’s gone.”
A stubborn look settled over Logan’s face. “I’m not a charity case.”
Ah, rich boy and poor boy had some issues themselves. Bishop understood what it meant to not have money. He’d gone into the Army when he’d aged out of foster care because he’d had no other place to go. At least this Logan kid had a home. Bishop understood pride, though. He wouldn’t have taken a handout at Logan’s age either. Sometimes all a man had was his pride. He was pretty sure Logan shouldn’t go into law enforcement though. He seemed really attached to his mothers’ apron strings.