“This report is grim,” she told him. He watched her expectantly. His margarita was half-gone, but she knew from experience that alcohol had little effect on his bulky body.
She spoke in a hushed tone. “The internet has sustained significant damage. Approximately forty percent of the known servers have suffered some form of attack and it is estimated that most of the rest have a latent form of the virus hiding on disk, waiting to strike.”
Johansen nodded and leaned back a bit in his chair. “It’s like we’re fighting a thousand viruses at once, rather than just the latest one of the month,” he said. His hand slid down to his waist, and-although she couldn’t be sure-probably popped open the top button of his pants. Immediately after this move, he faked a cough and touched his hand to his mouth. There were a lot of large dishes stacked on his side of the table, and he had cleaned them all. Vasquez smiled down at her report.
“Let’s go over tomorrow’s checklist,” she said.
“Again?”
“Again,” she replied firmly.
Nodding, he produced a notepad. Even from across the table, she could see his neat, dark strokes of pen and pencil. The man really knew how to take good notes, and that had always impressed her. Vaguely, she wondered if that made her an obsessive-compulsive. She supposed that it did, but argued with herself that such a trait was often an advantage for a cop.
“Nog has been pinpointed at Brenda’s residence shortly before the police arrived. Witnesses noted his distinctive appearance and his Lincoln Towncar-” Johansen looked up from his notes with a grin, “- a fat guy in a huge white whale of a car must’ve impressed the kids.”
She nodded and smiled vaguely, hinting with the incline of her head that he should keep going. He caught the look and must have realized that she was doing some real thinking, because he snapped back to the notebook and dropped the levity from his voice.
“The presence of the police-band emissions detector-” here he lifted a small black box from his pocket and placed it on the table, “- seems to support the idea that Nog had recently been present,” Johansen paused for a moment to finger the box. “This is a nice piece of homebrew work, the electronics techs told me. It seemed like they were impressed, almost like they wanted to hire this Nog guy when we caught up with him.”
Vasquez nodded. “He’s clearly a genius.”
“It almost lends credibility to Vance’s claims.”
Vasquez looked at him. “You think Nog released the virus?”
“I’m beginning to wonder.”
She nodded. “Pray continue.”
He did, detailing the possible presence of Vance at Brenda’s and ending with their odd collision with Sarah Vance at Ingles place and Ingles’ disappearance.
“We have put an APB out on Ingles now as well, but so far have come up with nothing,” he said, closing the notebook and downing the rest of his margarita. “There’s still no sign of Vance’s kid, either.”
She took another sip of her drink. It was half-gone now, and she was starting to feel the tingling, relaxing effects of the first drink she had had in weeks.
There it was. It was everything and it seemed like a big nothing. She knew now that other teams were on this investigation. There were the national security people, an FBI homicide team and possibly another team from the military. Still, though, she felt the pressure to succeed. It had started out as their case, and they had made progress, but without tangible results. They still had no arrests and they still had done nothing to halt the electronic plague that continued to damage the nation’s newest growth industry.
She closed her eyes and settled back in her chair. She ran the whole story through her head and sought an angle, an answer that might break the case like a magic shoe-size in a Sherlock Holmes story. But there was nothing, or at least she couldn’t see it. She opened her eyes again and found that Johansen watched her intently.
She glanced at him, pursed her lips and shook her head. He sat back in disappointment. He had such faith in her that it hurt to see that she had let him down. She smiled at him. He had actually believed she was about to come up with some stroke of genius, some witty connection that everyone else had missed. Such faith made him more endearing.
She sighed and drank more. The whole thing had grown too big. She had even begun to believe that they themselves were being followed by agents, with orders to jump in when something broke. That was both reassuring and disturbing. It meant the brass trusted them to birddog the quarry, but not to make the collar themselves. She supposed that their superiors were just being cautious, as there was too much at stake to let one team’s pride get in the way.
“You know,” she said, running her finger around the top of her margarita glass and knocking the crust of salt off as she went, “I don’t think we’re going to solve this one tonight.”
He laughed. “In that case, I’ve got just the thing.”
She looked up then, with eyebrows raised. She caught something in his eye-a twinkle you might say, she thought to herself-but then she chided herself for having such ideas. She turned her eyes back down to her drink. Her finger still ran around the top of the glass. It was beginning to make a singing, moaning sound now that she liked.
“Tell me,” she said quietly.
Johansen grinned and opened his mouth, but snapped it shut again as two men appeared at their booth. Their haircuts and their suits said it alclass="underline" They were government agents, through-and-through. Neither man was smiling.
“Agent Vasquez? Agent Johansen?” asked the taller of the two. He was a black man with a mustache and a set of large rings on his fingers.
“Yes?” Johansen answered. He automatically put his hands on the table and chair back, as if ready to throw himself to his feet.
“I’m Agent Verr out of Virginia,” he said, flashing his ID and badge. “I’m here to tell you that my team is taking over this investigation. Here are my orders, and yours.”
He presented them with piece of paper. Vasquez eyed it, realizing it was a fax, of all things. How many years had it been since she had seen a fax? With the internet problems, they had gone back in time twenty years overnight.
Johansen took the fax somewhat reluctantly. Vasquez followed Verr’s eyes as they swept over the dinner table, pausing at the margaritas and possibly Johansen’s popped-open pants. She felt a flash of hot embarrassment. It was a sickening feeling that she wasn’t used to.
“I would appreciate it if you could provide a briefing in the morning,” continued Verr after a short silence. His eyes ran over the table again and pointedly looked at the drinks. “At say, ten o’clock? We could meet you at the police headquarters.”
“Make it seven,” snapped Vasquez. “We’ll be there.”
Verr pursed his lips and nodded. “Seven it is, then.”He left without offering to shake hands.
“What a prick,” said Vasquez, staring after his back. “He did that just to show us he could.”
“What?”
“Coming in here like that. Showing us that he could find us at any time, like it was nothing for him. He could’ve waited until we reported in tomorrow, but he just couldn’t wait to tell us he had taken away our assignment.”
Johansen sighed. “We just took too long, that’s all. The brass got nervous and decided to make a change. Any change would do, we can’t take it personally.”
“Well, I do,” growled Vasquez.
Johansen read the fax. They both glanced at them and grimaced.
“It’s true. We’re relieved,” said Johansen. “Funny word, that. Relieved. Hmph. More like: ‘found incompetent’, or ‘summarily forgotten’, or ‘discovered to have screwed pooch’.”