In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel (22 page)

A flicker caught the corner of her eye, so
she turned back to the window. The lights outside each of the rooms
had apparently clicked on via timer or sensor. The strange
juxtaposition between the falling darkness and the soft glow of
backlighting turned the window into a translucent mirror. The
reflection staring back at her was drawn and expressionless. She
knew she should really just try to get some sleep, but she was
afraid that at this point she was too exhausted for that to happen.
She’d crashed straight through that barrier and was now running on
adrenalin and caffeine. She knew all too well that couldn’t go on
forever.

She sighed, then focused her gaze past the
tired face in the glass, and stared out across the parking lot once
again. As she was allowing herself to be mesmerized by the falling
snow, a soft ding combined with a rapid clatter sounded from the
desk a few feet away. She turned her head in time to see her cell
phone vibrate toward the edge, then stop, still safely inches from
the precipice. She allowed the drapery to fall back into place then
padded over to the desk and picked up the device.

The display read, “1 New Text Message.”

She thumbed over to the text folder and
opened it. The sender ID for the message that had just arrived was
blank, but it was tagged urgent. Constance pursed her lips and
sighed. Probably a SPAM text. She’d received them before, but just
to be sure, she highlighted it and pressed ‘OK’.

The message read, “CK PRSNL EML”

She scrunched her brow and frowned as she
dropped herself into the desk chair and laid the phone aside. A
pair of finessed jiggles and a re-orientation of the
Gideon’s
Bible later, she managed to hang on to a solid
Internet connection and proceeded to download her personal
email.

The window on the screen filled slowly with
line after line of electronic communiqués. She didn’t have to spend
any time sorting through them, though, as one stood out
immediately. Tagged URGENT, with a blank field for both the sender
and subject header, it was highlighted in red. However, what made
it even more prominent was that it appeared at the bottom of the
list, because whoever was behind it had set the date of the email
to 12/25/1975. She knew it wasn’t unusual for spammers to use bogus
dates in order to get your attention, but the choice of these
digits seemed to be more than mere coincidence.

She dragged the tip of her finger across the
touch-pad to highlight the email, then gave it a quick double tap.
A new window opened on cue. The body of the electronic
communication was simply, “HEAVY SYMBOLISM OF THE SEASON. MERRY
XMAS.” Below the body was an attached file, the name of which was a
series of seemingly random letters and numbers.

Constance drew her finger around in a circle
on the touch-pad, making the cursor slowly orbit the file name on
the attachment bar along the bottom of the email window. Pausing,
she picked up her cell phone and scrolled the text message onto the
screen again. Nothing helpful. Just “CK PRSNL EML.”

Looking back at the computer screen, she
rested her finger on the touchpad and began to circle the cursor
around the attachment again. Last minute assignments, documentation
missing from a case file, cold shoulders from colleagues, weird
houses, strange rural cops with something to hide, and now this…
Things were turning a little too cloak and dagger for her liking.
Office politics were bad enough, but this seemed like something
more.

She stopped and picked up the cell phone
again. She thumbed through the numbers in the personal phone book
until she reached the entry belonging to her SAC. Something was
definitely wrong here, and as much as she hated the idea, she
feared some of her fellow agents might be involved. As she
highlighted the number and allowed her thumb to hover above the
TALK button, she once again took notice of the pearlescent pink
manicure that graced her nails courtesy of Merrie.

She brought her free hand up and inspected
the lacquered tips of her fingers. Sheriff Carmichael’s stern
remark from the previous day echoed inside her head. “
I’ll do
whatever it takes to protect our little girl... So will anyone else
here in Hulis. And just so you know, that’s not a threat, sugar;
it’s a promise
.”

The words definitely weren’t empty. There had
been something in his tone that told her as much. And for some
reason, at this very moment she was feeling just as protective of
Merrie Callahan as any actual resident of the town, including
Carmichael.

Constance chewed on her lip for a moment,
then looked back at the cell phone in her hand. Shifting her thumb,
she dropped it down on the END button and cleared it back to the
home screen without making the call. Laying it aside, she returned
her attention to the notebook computer and slid the cursor over the
top of the file, then quickly tapped twice on the touch-pad.

As it opened, her anti-virus software blipped
onto the screen, announced that the file was clean, and allowed it
to open. She heard the disk drive whirring, then the installed
media player automatically loaded. A few scant seconds later, Burl
Ives was belting out
Silver and Gold
from the built-in
speakers.

Constance stared at it for a handful of
seconds, then puffed out an annoyed sigh and fell against the back
of the chair. A damn Christmas song. What kind of a joke was this?
Did the email even have anything to do with this case? Maybe she
was starting to have hallucinations brought on by the exhaustion,
and her brain was just leaping to conclusions that it wouldn’t
otherwise. Maybe the email was just a greeting from a friend who
was playing with her, and that was all. It wouldn’t be the first
time.

“But what about that date?” she mumbled,
thinking aloud.

She checked it again. Then she double-checked
herself just to be sure. It still read “12/25/1975”, and that just
couldn’t be a coincidence.

She slid her fingers up through her hair and
brought her hands to rest on the back of her head. The knot where
she dinged her scalp was still tender, but she didn’t care at this
point. She simply held on as her chin drifted toward her chest.
Then she let loose with another sigh.

Maybe the date really was just a bizarre
fluke. Could it be that she was reading too much into all of this?
Not just the date on the email, but everything?

“
Lex parsimoniae
, Constance...” she mumbled aloud.
“
Lex parsimoniae deus damnat
...”

The law of parsimony. Occam’s Razor. She
needed to step back, look at the simple explanations first, and
then work her way forward from there. Don’t make it complicated
unless it proves itself to be so. She was allowing the fact that
she was feeling spooked to turn some clerical oversights, a
conversation with a jerk agent, and a hyper-observant small-town
sheriff into a rampant conspiracy theory of her own making.

She knew better than this.

She
knew
she knew better than
this.

She closed her eyes and contemplated her
faulty reasoning. Burl Ives was continuing to croon in her ears,
but she wasn’t really paying attention. However, her internal focus
on self-recrimination was diverted by an unexpected noise.

She listened closely, and then it repeated.
Her stomach was rumbling. No big surprise. Except for the slice of
“apology pie” from the sheriff, she hadn’t eaten at all today.

Maybe that would help. She knew from
experience that you could think much better with something in your
stomach, so she did a quick mental inventory. There were some
emergency energy bars stashed in her suitcase; she knew that for
sure. She never traveled without them. There should also be a
military surplus MRE in there too. She always kept one in her “go
kit,” because you just never knew where you would end up, or if
you’d have access to food when you needed it.

Her gut gave another low growl. It was
telling her that an energy bar wasn’t going to do the trick. It
wanted something more substantial, but the MRE didn’t sound very
inviting. You could easily live on one for two or three days if you
rationed it out. That’s what they were designed to accomplish.
However, whether or not your taste buds would survive was a
different story entirely. Besides, tomorrow was Christmas Eve and
she was going to be stuck on surveillance here in Hulis. Those
vitamin-enriched, preservative-laden military rations could very
well end up being her Christmas dinner, as unappetizing a thought
as it was.

Surely something was still open. It was dark
outside, but it was still relatively early. She should probably
head out now before the snow became too thick, not to mention that
this was a small town. They probably rolled up the sidewalks right
after the evening news.

Her stomach issued yet another gurgling pang,
so she decided to give in. She didn’t recall hearing the end of the
song, but Burl had finally stopped singing to her about silver and
gold decorations, so now was as good a time as any to just get out
and clear her head.

“You need a vacation,” she told herself aloud
as she sighed, then dropped her hands, lifted her face, and opened
her eyes.

That was when she saw it.

The media player was paused, and in the
center of the screen was a small, rectangular window. Inside its
borders was a winking cursor, and above it a string of text that
said, “ENTER ENCRYPTION KEY.”

She blinked just to be sure and then
continued staring at the screen. Maybe Occam’s Razor was a little
dull this time after all. Now she just had to figure out what the
encryption key was.

Behind the newly opened window she could see
the original email. The text still read, “HEAVY SYMBOLISM OF THE
SEASON. MERRY XMAS.”

She was sure that was a hint, but at the
moment it wasn’t much help.

She reached out and rested her fingertips on
the home row of the keyboard, keeping her touch light. She thought
about the tune that had played when the file opened and then tapped
out SILVERAN; however, the DGOLD wouldn’t fit. The field was only
allowing eight characters, so the song title probably wasn’t it. It
was too easy, anyway. She backspaced and pondered some more. A pair
of false starts later she typed in SLVRGOLD. Maybe too easy was
where she needed to start. After a bit of trepidation washed over
her, she hit enter.

The small window flashed quickly, then the
words “INCORRECT KEY!” winked at her in bright red. The rectangular
window disappeared and she heard the computer hard drive spin up.
Panic rushed in to fill her chest as she imagined the file erasing
itself. She considered thumbing the power switch to stop it, but
hesitated as the storage device whirred back to silence. After
several tense seconds, the prompt returned, “ENTER ENCRYPTION
KEY.”

Constance allowed a relieved sigh to flow out
of her lungs.

She stared awhile longer, then in a moment of
inspiration typed “BURLIVES” and tapped enter.

The laptop whirred, the window flashed, and
then once again it displayed the winking red “INCORRECT KEY!”

Disheartened, she sat back in the chair and
glared at the screen. After several minutes of staring, she
retrieved a flash drive from her laptop case and made a backup copy
of the file, mutely cursing herself for not having done so at the
outset. Then she stood up, stuffed it into her pocket, and shrugged
into her coat. Then after stuffing her feet into her running shoes,
she dug out a handful of change from her purse and headed for the
door. There was a soda machine close to the motel office, and if
this turned into a long night she would be in desperate need of
more caffeine. Besides, it was really looking like she’d be having
an energy bar for dinner after all, and she’d have to have
something to wash it down.

BOTH
the wind and the snow had picked
up, and even though she was walking beneath an overhang, Constance
was forced to turn up her collar and shield her face as she trudged
through what was now easily two inches of accumulation on the
sidewalk. The movement was welcome though. Even after stretching
she was still a bit stiff and definitely needed to move around.

She felt a slight twinge in her dinged shin
as she walked, but ignored it. Between the back of her head, her
side, and now her leg, she had literally taken a beating while
working this case and didn’t even have a suspect yet. Something
seemed terribly wrong with that picture.

Having gone as far as she could on the
sidewalk, she ventured out from beneath the overhang. Snow swirled
on brief gusts and pelted her face as she crossed the parking lot
of the blocky U-shaped motel. She couldn’t help but notice that her
car was still the only one occupying the otherwise empty expanse of
snow-covered asphalt. She began to hurry as the wind rose again and
sent a sharp knife of cold inside the loose folds of her coat. Half
jogging, she continued the rest of the way across, then followed
the VENDING sign and ducked into the small service corridor behind
the office.