But if you were an angry, disenfranchised, parentally neglected kid in Iowa, with no Hollywood pedigree and no paparazzi following your Porsche from club to club, you didn't get attention. Which is where the Web came in, where the Web was changing everything. And as far as she was concerned, it was just a matter of time before that kid in Iowa decided to blow the Paris Hiltons and Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohans out of the water with something truly spectacular.
Nobody at the Bureau understood that in quite the way she did, and nobody had been particularly fearful of such a scenario, until she'd told them they should be. They hadn't exactly laughed at her, but they'd made it perfectly clear that eavesdropping on teenagers was a waste of the Bureau's time and resources. Six months ago she'd been wasting her own personal time eavesdropping on YouTube when she discovered a plot by two high school seniors to blow up their Texas school. Like all bureaucracies, and most shortsighted businesses, if something worked before, it was taken for granted that it would work again. So when new threats emerged on the Internet, they just assumed their tech whizzes could find the source and catch the bad guys. The problem was, criminals adapted much faster than law- abiding citizens, and with the sophisticated anonymity software available, the bad guys were golden, at least in this brief point in time, before law enforcement could catch up. It took vision and a general lack of faith in humanity to anticipate hideous crimes that hadn't even been invented yet, which is essentially how she'd created a new position for herself above and beyond her work as a profiler.
She ate in front of her computer, watching it download the software program Roadrunner had sent her. Why was it computer geeks always used cutesy little handles instead of something more dignified, more befitting their intelligence? And he was brilliant, this Roadrunner character, at least according to John. His modification of a program to clean up all the nuisance 'City of' posts was pure genius. She prayed the alarm wouldn't buzz tonight as she crawled into bed, exhausted.
As it turned out, her prayers were answered. The alarm didn't sound until sunrise.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Magozzi woke up before sunrise to a hot, swampy summer morning that promised misery to all and certain death to his decrepit, wheezing window air conditioner. The next home improvement project was going to be a practical one - central air.
Gino had begged to keep the Cadillac for a couple days, so this morning he was chauffeuring Magozzi to work for a change, even though it meant backtracking an extra ten miles. When Magozzi stepped out of his house he was already at the curb, lounging in the driver's seat with his eyes closed, AC cranked to arctic blast, the stereo wailing vintage Springsteen.
Magozzi hopped in on the passenger's side, and Gino bolted up in his seat. 'Christ, Leo! I didn't even hear you,' he shouted over the noise.
Magozzi punched the stereo off. 'I can't imagine why. Are you trying to get popped for a noise violation, or what?'
Gino smiled a little sheepishly. 'Glory days, buddy. Glory days.'
'Why are you in such a good mood? You hate mornings.'
'Are you kidding? We helped save a life and bust a complete psychopath yesterday, and we don't even have any paperwork to do on it. That's just about as perfect as this job ever gets.'
'Yeah, I guess.'
'Did you hear if they pulled anything off Huttinger's computer yet?'
'Everything's still in lockdown with the Feds in Oregon. Monkeewrench is waiting on copies of the drives.'
Gino shook his head. 'Man, I can't believe that freak was actually Teacher of the Year.'
'Scary.'
'No shit, it's scary. Parent-teacher conferences are never going to be the same.' Gino put the car in gear, then reached over and cranked the stereo again.
When they got to City Hall, two squads were coming up out of the underground garage, lightbars flashing. Even over Gino's music, Magozzi could hear the sirens spit out a wail a few seconds later for the intersection, and tried to remember what this week's policy was. The battle was ongoing: half the denizens of City Hall wanted a quiet zone around the building to keep from going deaf every time a squad pulled out on a call; the other half wanted sirens on the second the cars hit daylight as a warning to sidewalk pedestrians. The one and only hard-and-fast rule was that sirens were not turned on inside the garage, which was one of the dumbest three-page memos he'd ever read on the job, detailing the decibel level of a siren inside a closed concrete structure and the potential of hearing loss. Duh.
'Ten bucks says those guys are going on a donut run,' Gino said as he reluctantly departed the posh cocoon of their loaner.
'In your dreams.'
'Yeah, in my dreams. You know, I haven't had a good donut since they closed the Melo-Glaze. You know what they're making there now? Dog biscuits. Frigging boutique dog biscuits. If that's not a waste of good, industrial kitchen equipment, I don't know what is. I mean, we've all had dogs before, we know what they eat. And I can tell you one thing, it's not pistachio-encrusted, truffle-infused, carob-coated petit fours. Which actually aren't that bad.'
'You ate dog food?'
Gino shrugged and hitched his pants up. 'I didn't realize it was a goddamned dog bakery last time I went.'
In the office, they found Johnny McLaren and his partner, Tinker Lewis, standing around the filing cabinet, looking at the little television on top.
'What's with the TV?'
McLaren snorted. 'It's stupid day at the airport again. Some jerk forgot a package next to a chair in baggage claim and they had to evacuate the terminal.'
Magozzi glanced at the screen, saw a shaky long-lens shot of hundreds of passengers hightailing it away from the terminal while the Bloomington PD Bomb Squad moved in. He shook his head, thinking of the thousands of dollars that would be spent having somebody's lunch box hauled away in a total containment vessel and moved to a detonation site.
McLaren said, 'I don't get it. There's great security at the airport. You can hardly get in the damn place.'
Gino snorted. 'Are you kidding me? Every time Angela's parents fly in she's crossing her legs half the way there and by the time I pull up to the curb she's out of the car like a rocket, tearing inside to use the can. And let me tell you, that's woman's purse is huge. She could carry a tactical nuke in that thing, and nobody stops her. There is no security at passenger pickup.'
McLaren was troubled. 'That can't be right.'
'You ever been to the airport, McLaren?'
McLaren flipped him the bird and continued staring at the television.
'Well, when you're finished wasting taxpayer dollars watching the idiot box, get your ass over to our cube so we can talk about all that help you're supposedly giving us.'
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just a couple more minutes.'
They drifted to their desks, and Gino sat down and swiped a pile of crumbs from his blotter. 'This whole plan to try and connect the victims drove me to drink more Chianti last night.'
'Worked for you last time.'
'Not this time. I'm thinking I should switch over to Pinot Grigio, just for the summer. Might be a little more inspirational.'