Blackmail Earth (28 page)

“Don’t try to script me,” Jenna said, temper rising. “I haven’t even assessed the situation yet.”

“Look,” Chris said to Alicia, “let’s find out what Jenna is comfortable saying.”

Good cop, bad cop,
Jenna thought.

“Okay,” Alicia said, “what are you
comfortable
saying?”

Jenna ground her molars and took a deep breath, but before she could respond, Alicia’s and Chris’s phones went off almost simultaneously. They walked off in different directions with their cells to their ears.

“I don’t believe it,” Alicia bellowed moments later as she slapped her phone down on a long table. She ran to a large, wall-mounted flat screen, turned it on, and flipped rapidly through the channels, flying past Oprah and Ellen and music videos and more before stopping on an image of Rick Birk, who looked haggard and truly scared.

“We’re not in the show because of this fuckface.” Alicia looked like she might smash the screen.

Birk slowly lifted his hand, revealing a pair of wire cutters clamped around his right thumb, the grips held by a person who remained mostly off camera.

The very first word out of Birk’s mouth was “Please,” spoken with a tremor. Jenna was shocked—as far as she knew, the correspondent had never uttered the word before. Birk cleared his throat noisily and added, “I need you to listen carefully.” He winced, and his eyes darted to his shanghaied thumb. A squiggly line of blood ran from beneath the wire cutters.

CHAPTER 18

A dust storm darkened the horizon, and Dafoe darted from cow to cow, trying to shift them from the pasture into the barn. They didn’t want to go, and offered baleful moos. Cows loved routine, and a howling storm at midday was definitely not routine.

“Move,” he bellowed, smacking Milquetoast on the hindquarters. He could imagine Bayou’s frustration, listening to the herd’s ballyhoo while convalescing on his doggie bed. But Dafoe wasn’t about to risk his border collie’s long-term recovery by putting him to work before he healed fully.

It took another ten minutes of maddening effort for Dafoe to finally drive all but one frisky calf into the barn. The recalcitrant critter kept dashing around and kicking up his hind legs. Between desperate lunges to grab the animal, Dafoe made a fast mental note to sell him. He could tell that this little guy would turn into an ornery bull. The taste of grit suddenly clouded his tongue and he looked up to see the sky darkening directly above him.

The calf suddenly sprinted to the barn. Dafoe followed close behind, finding most of the herd milling outside their stalls and looking dazed.
Hell,
he snorted to himself,
cows looked dazed all the time. They’re nature’s stoners.

He got them into their stalls—and just in time. The barn shuddered as the dust storm descended on the farm. The cows raised another chorus.

Dafoe pulled out his cell and saw a text message from Jenna saying she missed the cows, and him, too! Ha-ha. It milked a smile from his frowning face. He called Forensia, who’d headed into the farmhouse an hour ago to pay bills.

“You okay in there?” he asked her.

“We’re fine.” The “we” meant that Sang-mi was still by her side. “We got all the windows shut before the storm hit. I’m just glad we’ve still got power.”

Dafoe glanced at his milking machines and touched wood. A window near him shook visibly from a gust. The air outside looked as dark as the sky had minutes ago. It was only noon.

“You need to go home and close any hatches?” he asked. Forensia kept a garden and a compost pile, and hung all her laundry on an outdoor line—the country Pagan maiden in every regard.

“We’re fine. Where are you?”

“In the barn. I’ll be heading over to you in just a moment.”

Dafoe snapped his cell shut and looked around, thinking that the gnarly dust storm would have excited Jenna. If a weather front of this magnitude were approaching the city, they’d be breaking into regular programming so she could provide constant updates.

As he eased out of the barn, the cows were still making a hell of a racket, like they could moo away bad weather. Squinting, he bolted to the house. Forensia threw open the door as he reached for the handle. Behind her, Dafoe could see Sang-mi on the couch, seemingly mesmerized by the Weather Channel on TV. For a young woman who’d grown up watching nothing but the numbingly boring speeches of North Korean political leaders, the Weather Channel proved riveting. It even grabbed Dafoe’s attention with a report about more than a dozen wildfires eating up Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.

“What a day,” he said, darting into the bathroom to rinse dust from his face and wash his hands.

“Hey, there’s the dust storm,” Forensia exclaimed from the living area. Dafoe rushed in as the screen switched to aerial views of a dark cloud blanketing much of central New York. As a farmer, Dafoe couldn’t help but consider the wind a sticky-fingered thief for lifting away tons of dry topsoil, like a pickpocket working a county fair.

Dafoe strolled over to his computer. “Billing’s all done,” Forensia said.

“I’m just checking e-mail.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’ve got a big time girlfriend now,” Forensia gently teased. “You got to keep up with her.”

“I’ll never be able to do that,” Dafoe laughed. “But she just texted me.”

“A good one?” Forensia teased.

“Yes,” he said patiently. “A very nice one.” His smile vanished quickly when he saw his e-mail security system’s warning:
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY ATTEMPT
. The bright-red stop sign noted that the attempt had come earlier this morning.

“Forensia, would you come over here?”

She tore her eyes from the TV and casually draped her hand on the back of his chair. “What’s up?”

“Look at this.”

“Wow. What’s that all about?” She sounded genuinely puzzled.

“I’m working on that.”

Dafoe had drawn on his considerable experience as a hacker to design his security system. This warning had come up once before, but within hours GreenSpirit’s murder had been discovered, and his attention had shifted to other safety concerns. That first attempt had failed, and Dafoe had figured some kid in Singapore or Paris had chanced on the wrong guy and given up when they saw his formidable security.

Once burned, twice cautious,
he told himself. He didn’t believe that coincidence could explain two attempts to penetrate his e-mail in less than a week. He was a dairy farmer, not the Department of Defense.

“I would never go near your private stuff, Dafoe.”

He believed her, and nodded to assure Forensia of this. But his system was telling him that the most recent attempt had taken place just an hour and a half ago, and had originated on his own computer.

When he looked at Sang-mi, she was looking right back at him.

*   *   *

Sheriff Walker marched into his office’s only large conference room with an evidence bag more valuable than a dozen of the biggest campaign contributions that he’d received in the last five elections combined. He was a perennial winner, universally popular, and had to know that what he held in his hand could have a huge bearing on the GreenSpirit murder investigation. It might also shock many of his supporters, but his record suggested that ultimately he was an officer who’d rather be viewed as a no-nonsense lawman than a nice guy.

“Gentlemen,” Walker announced in a courtly manner as he looked around the room where the law enforcement officers had set up their computers and other investigatory tools. The sheriff appeared to savor the instant attention of the senior homicide detective for the New York State Police, and a serial killer profiler from the FBI, who was examining possible links between GreenSpirit’s murder and the savage slaying of a Vermont Pagan. Two agents from the FBI’s New York City office also looked up at Walker, who said, “I have found something in the woods that I think will be of great interest.” He held up the evidence bag.

“What’s in there, Sheriff?” asked Agent Mullins, a mulish-looking man who could have been thirty-five or fifty. Either lucky with aging or cursed by it.

“It’s a piece of fabric with what appears to be a bloodstain on it. Looks like it might have come from a bandana; it has part of a paisley pattern, near as I can tell.”

Mullins peered through the clear plastic. “Where’d you find it?”

“About three miles from the cabin. I couldn’t figure how someone could have gone through all that bramble and dead forest and not left a trace of himself, so I kept looking.”

Sheriff Walker might have felt bound to perform such a review because he’d “compromised the crime scene.” That was the scorching assessment of the New York State Police homicide team. The review also noted dryly that “The murder is the first one the sheriff has investigated.”

“How did we miss it?” Agent Mullins sounded incredulous.

“Don’t feel bad, Agent Mullins. I found it on a deer trail that runs down the east side of the mountain. It’s tight in there.” He held up the bag with the bloody swatch again. “It was stuck to a branch that had broken off a tree. It’s not a trail you’d ever take if you could avoid it, but—”

“If you were a panicky killer you might,” Mullins finished for him.

“I believe you’re right, and I believe this has got mud and blood dried on it,” Walker said.

Mullins took the bag from him and stared at the stains. “Hard to tell when it’s all dried up like that, but we’ll get it to our lab.”

The FBI profiler, an older woman named Barb Lassiter, looked up. “The Robb kid had a paisley bandana on in that CBS report. I remember that. I wonder if he’s missing a piece of it.”

“My thoughts exactly,” the sheriff said.

“Let’s run DNA on that right away.” Lassiter flipped aside her straw-colored hair and eyed the sheriff closely. He thought her smile had “Good work” written all over it.

Mullins was staring at the evidence bag. “Pretty brazen of that kid, or his lawyer, to hold a press conference to proclaim his innocence, if he’d left that kind of evidence behind. Like waving a red flag in our face.”

“He passed the polygraph,” Lassiter said, still looking at Sheriff Walker.

“He did, indeed,” the sheriff agreed.

Mullins held up the bag to the light for another look. “Forensics rules for a reason. If you’re a good enough bullshitter, especially if you believe your own lies, you can pass Miss Poly. But we all know that, don’t we, Sheriff?”

Walker nodded.

*   *   *

Jason Robb ran another passing drill, feeling pretty damn good about his performance—at yesterday’s press conference. They’d believed him.
Damn right, mon, ’cause you be righteous.

Carl Boon hiked the ball through his chunky legs, and Jason back stepped before delivering the pigskin into the hands of Ryan Petress, who dropped the fucker. Petress apologized when he came running back to the line. Jason had noticed that his teammates had become unusually respectful since his return to the team, treating him like a goddamn deity.

The whole experience had been exciting. Even the CBS story a few days ago had turned into a big plus. As soon as Aly Wennerstrom saw him, on the tube in her family’s cabin, she got totally horny. She’d pointed to the screen and shouted, “That’s you. Oh my God, Jason, you’re on TV.” “No, Aly,” he’d cooed, “I’m right here.” And just that fast they’d set off on a hot and steamy bone-down safari. Better than slipping her a roofie.
Fine muff, mon, even with dem rubba boots on.

She’d told Jason that when they came back to town, she’d had to swear to Jesus—“Really, Jason, I had to put my hand on my tiny gold cross and swear before all of God’s angels that every word was true, and now I feel so guilty”—that they’d been “chaste” the whole time. Her mom had believed her; her father said that he still wanted Jason’s hide. Hearing Aly’s account made Jason realize that he wasn’t the only great liar in their relationship.

The Q-back took another hike from Carl, stepped back, and this time drilled it right into Petress’s hands—and he held the ball. Yes!

Coach Taverson ended the practice on that high note. Jason felt so good it didn’t bother him at all when he spotted two dark-suited guys watching him head to the locker room.

Fuck dem monkeys, mon. You rule.

A powerful impulse seized Jason just before he entered the building. He spun around and flipped them off. Both cops. Both hands. Felt
so
good. Right up there with the bone-down safari in Aly Wennerstrom’s sweaty little jungle.

*   *   *

Forensia peered quizzically at Sang-mi. “What’s going on?” she asked. Her friend was staring at Dafoe.

Sang-mi covered her face with her hands and cried, though Forensia could tell that she was weeping only by the shaking of her shoulders. Sang-mi made no sound as she wept.

“Were you trying to get into my e-mail?” Dafoe spoke softly and without any obvious accusation; Sang-mi looked fragile enough to shatter.

From behind her hands, she nodded.

“Why would you do that?” Forensia asked, still puzzled.

“GreenSpirit,” Sang-mi said softly. Dafoe asked her to repeat herself, which she did.

“Did GreenSpirit want something from my computer?” he asked. Sang-mi nodded. “What?”

Forensia thought it was strange that anyone would want anything from her boss’s computer. Of what possible interest could a dairy farmer be to a typical hacker, much less GreenSpirit?

Sang-mi shook her head and didn’t say a word.

“What you did was wrong, Sang-mi,” Forensia said, as kindly as she could.

“I’m so sorry,” the young woman said.

Forensia squeezed her hand. “Why did you do it? And what did you mean about GreenSpirit?” Forensia recalled the way the murdered witch had talked privately to Sang-mi after the initiation, and how she’d kept the Korean by her side during the circle dance. It pained Forensia to know that the reason these memories were so clear was that she’d felt jealous of the attention that the Pagan leader had bestowed on her friend. Now, Forensia was filled with only the deepest curiosity.

“She wanted to know about my country.” Sang-mi looked up, as if that explained everything.