Rooch opened the door before they could knock and led them in. A cast encasing his arm to the biceps, Doug offered Tim a peacemaking head flick of a greeting. From deep in the house, the muffled sound of Emma's crying overlapped with the baby's screams.
Will sat cocked back in his mesh chair, working his cheek with the cap of a pen. His eyes stayed on the computer monitor as they entered.
They circled behind him. His e-mail account was up on the screen, three messages from customercare@getwiththeprogram. com occupying the in-box. They'd each come with an attachment, judging from the already-downloaded icons on the desktop – two jpeg photos and an mpeg video clip.
Tim's head buzzed, an ache cramping the temples. Judging from the look on Will's face, he did not want to know what the e-mails held.
Will double-clicked on the first jpeg. A photo appeared, resolving slowly in several waves. The potbellied stove in Randall and Skate's shed, the loading door open to reveal burned fragments of mail amid mounds of ash. Fluorescent yellow scraps from Tannino's mailing stood out against the soot. Tannino tapped the screen eagerly, indicating them. "This establishes time frame."
The second jpeg showed the shed from outside, TD's cottage in the backdrop.
Tim's hands were shaking with excitement.
Tannino flipped open his phone.
"Wait." Will still did not look up at them.
He clicked the mpeg. The little clock icon seemed to blink interminably as the segment loaded. The image popped up, Leah hunched in front of the computer in the mod, staring into the QuickCam mounted atop the monitor. The glow from the screen lit the room a pale blue. One of the file drawers to her right sat open. Over her shoulder the ceiling was barely visible and the dark, offset pane of the skylight.
The time stamp on the e-mail said 4:41 A.M.
Just before the colloquium had begun, when TD and the other Pros were heading down to the Radisson. Tim wondered how in hell she'd managed to get her hands on a telephone cord to send out the e-mails.
She spoke with hushed urgency. "I couldn't get enough time alone to get done what I needed to, so I screwed up the Web site launch to make TD ground me from the colloquium. I'm sorry I couldn't get word to you, but I figured it was worth the risk to get more time up here with most everyone gone. Will, you should have downloaded two digital photos by now." She glanced nervously behind her, though the mod was empty. "And show Tim this, too." She held up a piece of paper.
Tannino said, "Pause that."
Will froze and enlarged the image. TD's letterheaded memo became clear.
1. 1. Mail is to be picked up at the P.O. box every two days.
2. 2. Mail should be delivered to the Teacher's cottage and set inside the front door to the right.
3. 3. When the Teacher is done sorting through it, he will place it to the left of the door.
4. 4. Mail is to be picked up and disposed of in the stove in the shed.
5. 5. Mail should never be opened by anyone other than the Teacher.
The list continued, thirteen points in all, punctuated by TD's flowery signature.
"Holy Mary." Tannino flipped open his phone and started punching numbers. "There's our hook. They'll be renting his ass in Men's Central by the end of the week."
Dray kept her eyes on Will. "What's the problem?"
Will's hand slid over and clicked the mouse again, unfreezing the mpeg.
Leah hopped up and returned the memo to its place, sliding the file drawer quietly closed. She came back over and leaned in front of the QuickCam. "I found" – she swallowed hard – "I found a letter you wrote me, Will, scanned into the computer." Her eyes moistened. "I wanted you to know I read it. TD stole it just to pervert the personal parts, use them against me." Her tone hardened. "I have more information for Tim, but nothing I could send out fast, so I figured I'd get you what was concrete and fill you in on the rest when you get here. Now, don't worry. I erased the digital photos and the e-mails I sent. I even programmed this one to delete as soon as it's sent."
Dray gasped, which she rarely did. Tim turned to her in surprise, but she pointed at the screen.
In the background the faint reflected light on the doorknob behind Leah began to shift. The door eased open, and a dark, bulky figure slid into the room. Leah remained leaning forward, oblivious.
The shadow inched toward her, a fall of light unmasking an edge of Skate's leering face. He took another silent step forward as Leah smiled into the mini camera.
"I'm perfectly safe."
She reached for where the mouse would be, and the video went to black.
Chapter fifty-one
While Tim went out of his mind with impatience, Winston reviewed and reworded the affidavits that Tim had drafted while bouncing in the passenger seat of Tannino's Bronco on the way over. They caught the magistrate judge, a white-haired fixture of the court named Judith Seitel, on the bench; she considered Tannino's mad gesticulations in the back of the gallery with mild amusement before signaling them to wait for her outside chambers until she could break away.
Tim, Dray, Tannino, and Winston Smith sat like schoolchildren, lined on a wooden bench in the courthouse corridor. Their cell phones chirped every few seconds like angry insects. To ensure that the operation would be locked and loaded by the time they arrived at the pre-step-off point with search and arrest warrants in hand, Tannino alternated calls between Miller, who'd activated the ART squad, and the station captain at La Crescenta, whose sheriff's deputies serviced Sylmar.
It was already after three o'clock – every minute passed with kidney-stone agony. Tim tried to keep his mind off what was being done to Leah right now as they waited in the air-conditioned hallway. If she was still alive.
Winston flipped through the search-warrant affidavit, reviewing it a final time. "You'll only be authorized to search the shed, Betters's cottage, and the modular office where the memo was stored and the mail scanned – the areas relevant to mail destruction and theft."
"We've got to be able to look for Leah, too," Tim said.
Winston nodded sagely. "Given this is an armed camp, known members of which we've already charged with kidnapping a federal officer, you can take extra precautions to assure your safety. It might be prudent and reasonable to move cottage to cottage to neutralize potential threats."
"Can we seize the computer in the mod?"
"We have to find something incriminating on it first. The warrant should clear you to click around, look for mail-related evidence, like the scanned stolen letter Leah mentioned. Get in, get something concrete, then you can take it into evidence and spend more time with it in the lab." He winked. "Then we can get into the Dead Link files we don't yet know are stored on the hard drive. Let's hope they put out for us."
Tannino nodded at Tim. "We'll bring Frisk from ESU in case he has to do some hacking."
Tim checked his watch again.
"I hate to be the one to say it," Dray said, "but what if she's already dead? I mean, Betters wasn't coming back to the ranch in the best mood after we clusterfucked his colloquium. She might be six feet under in the woods."
Tannino paused from his call, tucking the receiver to his neck. "We need cadaver dogs."
"You can't bring cadaver dogs to investigate destruction of the mails," Winston said. "It doesn't fall under the warrant's scope."
"The mail charges buy us dick at sentencing. I want a body."
"Then you'd better hope you trip over one."
Tim tilted his face into his spread hands, working the angles like a Chinese puzzle box. He pictured Skate and Randall marching Nancy into the woods, her pale hand clutching the shovel that was to bury her corpse. His head snapped up. "We're short a dog."