I stayed in my hotel room the whole evening, writing most of the next day’s story and repeatedly calling Rachel. The story was easy to put together. I first talked to my ace, Prendergast, about it and wrote up a budget line. I sent that in and then started constructing the story. Though it was not going to run until the next news cycle, I already had the main components well in hand. Beginning the following morning I would gather the latest details and just stick them in.
That is, if I was given any new details. What had been a mild dose of paranoia bloomed into something larger when my hourly calls to Rachel’s cell went unanswered and the messages unreturned. My plans for the evening-and the future-hit the rocks of doubt.
Finally, just before eleven o’clock, my cell phone rang. The caller ID said Mesa Verde Inn. It was Rachel.
“How’s L.A.?” she asked.
“ L.A. ’s fine,” I said. “I’ve been trying to call you. Didn’t you get my messages?”
“I’m sorry. My phone died. I was on it so much earlier. I’m back at the hotel now and just checked in. Thank you for leaving my bag with the desk.”
The dead phone explanation sounded plausible. I started to relax.
“No problem,” I said. “What room did they put you in?”
“Seven seventeen. What about you, did you go back to your house after all?”
“No, I’m still at the hotel.”
“Really? I just called the Kyoto and they put me through to your room but I got no answer.”
“Oh. It must have been when I went down the hall to get ice.”
I stared at the bottle of Grand Embrace Cabernet I had gotten from room service.
“So,” I said, to change the subject, “are you in for the night, then?”
“Jeez, I hope so. I just ordered room service. I suppose I’ll get called back out if they find something at Western Data.”
“What do you mean, there are still people in there?”
“The EER team is still there. They’re guzzling Red Bull like it’s water and working on into the night. Carver’s with them. But I couldn’t go the distance. I had to get some food and sleep.”
“And Carver’s just going to let them work through the night?”
“Turns out the scarecrow is a night owl. He takes several midnight shifts every week. Says he gets his best work done then, so he’s cool with staying.”
“What’d you order to eat?”
“Good old comfort food. A cheeseburger and fries.”
I smiled.
“I had the same thing, but skipped the cheese. No Pyrat rum or wine?”
“Nope, now that I’m back on the bureau per diem, no alcohol allowed. Not that I couldn’t use it.”
I smiled but decided to get down to business first.
“So what’s the latest update on McGinnis and Stone?”
There was a hesitation in her response.
“Jack, I’m tired. It’s been a long day and I’ve been in that bunker for the last four hours. I was hoping I could eat my dinner, take a hot bath and we could just leave business for tomorrow.”
“Look, I’m tired, too, Rachel, but remember I let you push me out of the way on the promise you would keep me informed. I haven’t heard from you since I left the warehouse and now you’re telling me you’re too tired to talk.”
Another hesitation.
“Okay, okay, you’re right. So let’s get this over with. The update is that there is good and bad news. The good news is that we know who Freddy Stone really is and he’s not Freddy Stone. Knowing his real identity will hopefully help us run him down.”
“Freddy Stone’s an alias? How’d he get by the supposedly vaunted security screening at Western Data? Didn’t they check his prints?”
“The thing is, company records show Declan McGinnis signed off on hiring him. So he could have greased it.”
I nodded. McGinnis could have gotten his partner in murder into the company, no sweat.
“Okay, so who is he?”
I opened my backpack on the bed and took out a notebook and pen.
“His real name is Marc Courier. That’s Marc with a c. Same age, twenty-six, with two felony arrests in Illinois for fraud. He skipped three years ago before trial. They were identity theft cases. He got credit cards, opened bank accounts, the whole nine yards. His history indicates he’s a gifted hacker and vicious troll with a long history of digital breaches and assaults. He’s a bad guy and he was right there in the bunker.”
“When did he come to work for Western Data?”
“Also three years ago. It looks like he split Chicago and almost immediately ended up in Mesa with the new name.”
“So McGinnis already knew him?”
“We think he recruited him. You know, it always used to be an amazing thing when two like-minded killers would hook up. You would think, What are the chances? But the Internet is a whole new ball game. It’s the great intersection, for things good and bad. With chat rooms and websites devoted to any fetish and paraphilia imaginable, we have people with similar interests hooking up every minute of the day. We are going to see more and more of this, Jack. Where they take it out of fantasy and cyberspace and into the real world. Meeting people with shared beliefs helps justify those beliefs. It emboldens. Sometimes it’s a call to action.”
“Did the name Freddy Stone belong to somebody else?”
“No, it looks like it was fabricated.”
“Any history of violence or sex offenses back in Chicago?”
“When he was arrested three years ago in Chicago, his computer was seized and they found a lot of porn. I am told it included a few Bangkok torture films but he wasn’t charged with anything. It’s too hard to make a case because the films carry disclaimers that they’re all actors and nothing is real, even though it most likely is real torture and pain.”
“What about stuff with leg braces, that sort of thing?”
“Nothing like that on the record but we’ll look into all of that, believe me. If the link between Courier and McGinnis is abasiophilia, we will find it. If they met in an iron maiden chat room we will find it.”
“How’d you make Courier’s ID?”
“The handprint stored on the biometric reader on the entrance to the server farm.”
I finished writing and checked my notes, looking for my next question.
“Will I be able to get a mug shot of Courier?”
“Check your e-mail. I sent one before I left. I want you to see if he looks familiar.”
I pulled my laptop across the bed and logged on to my e-mail. Her message was on top of the pile. I opened the photo and stared at a mug shot of Marc Courier from his arrest three years before. He had long dark hair and a scraggly goatee and mustache. He looked like he would fit in seamlessly with Kurt and Mizzou in the bunker at Western Data.
“Could it be the man from the hotel in Ely?” Rachel asked.
I studied the photo without answering.
“Jack?”
“I don’t know. It could be. I wish I had seen his eyes.”
I studied the photo for a few more seconds and then moved on.
“So you said you had good and bad news. What’s the bad news?” “Before he split, Courier planted replicating viruses in his own computer in the lab at Western Data and in the company archives. It chewed through almost everything by the time it was discovered tonight. The camera archives are gone. So is a lot of the company data.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means we’re not going to be able to track his movements as easily as we had hoped. You know, when he was there, when he wasn’t, any sort of connections or meetings with McGinnis, that sort of thing. E-mails back and forth. It would have been good to have.”
“How did that go unnoticed by Carver and all the safeguards they supposedly have in place there?”
“The easiest thing in the world to pull off is an inside job. Courier knew the defense systems. He built a virus that navigated around them.”
“What about McGinnis and his computer?”
“Better luck there, I am told. But they started on that late tonight, so I won’t know more until tomorrow when I go in. A search team was at his house all night as well. He lives alone, no family. I heard they found some interesting stuff but the search is ongoing.”