Kiss of the Sun (14 page)

When Flavio commenced his morning rounds, Martha made sure she was in her room. She sat at the desk, notebook open. Next to the notebook was a cup of weak coffee and her water bottle, still with the Unisom in the bottom. She had taped a sheet of paper around it, onto which she had drawn a childish scene with colored markers: grass, palm trees, seagulls, a yellow sun.

“Good morning, Miss Covington. I have a message from your psychiatrist, Dr. Goodwin.”

“Yes?”

“She won't be able to come by today.” Flavio pulled a bag from the hamper and replaced it with a fresh one. “She got called away for an urgent case in Savannah. She said she would be back on Monday but will give you a phone call at eleven.”

“Okay.”

Martha felt her shoulders relax as Flavio left the room. He'd paid no attention to the water bottle or its concealed contents.

A few minutes later she heard a knock at the open door and turned toward it. The sight she took in at first startled her, and then she blinked, thinking it might be a hallucination. When it didn't go away, she felt a flush of hope like a warm tide rising up through her bloodstream.

“I hope I'm not interrupting anything too important.” He stood in the doorframe, nearly filling it.

“Slinky?” Martha rose and blinked again.

“Yeah. How's it going, Martha? How are they treating you in this joint?”

“Oh, my God.” Martha walked toward him. “I've wanted to get in touch with you, but I didn't know how. Have you heard from Jarrell? Is he all right?”

“Hold on a minute, just a minute.” Slinky glanced behind him. “Okay if I close this door?”

Martha nodded, and he shut the door and pulled a visitor chair up next to the desk. He perched his sunglasses on his knit cap and glanced around the room.

“This place ain't bugged?”

“I don't think so.” Martha looked closely into his dark eyes, searching for the answer she was desperate to hear. She put her hand on his arm. “I don't know what happened to Jarrell. They won't tell me here. Is he—”

Slinky nodded. “Yeah, Jarrell's all right. I saw him on Wednesday.”

“Oh, thank God.” Martha squeezed Slinky's arm, felt her eyes brimming with tears. She grabbed a tissue from a box on Beulah's nightstand and wiped her eyes. “I'm sorry. It's been killing me in here, not knowing….”

“I understand. Jarrell got in touch with me through an anonymous chatroom and we met down by Tybee Island. He's fine. He knows you're in here, but he can't visit or contact you. Not yet. He's still hiding off the grid. But he wanted me to let you know he's all right. He asked me to give you this.”

Slinky handed her a small paper bag with the top crumpled over. She opened it and pulled out a small, pristine whelk shell. Martha took the pale shell in her hands and turned it slowly, taking in its delicate color, its perfect geometry. It had a faint scent of brine, of the sea, of the island. She closed her hands around it, her eyes turning wet again.

“He's in a tight spot now,” Slinky said. “The cops and the FBI have put out a BOLO for him. He's been identified as a person of interest in connection with the UNICON murders.”

“Why?”

“They searched his apartment and found something. Some kind of evidence. It's been on the news.”

Martha sat back, shook her head. “Someone is trying to frame him.”

Slinky nodded. “Jarrell knows it, too. He said he's been set up. Both of you have been. He wanted me to tell you that he's got a plan. You know our man Jarrell—he's always got a plan.”

“What's he going to do?” Martha asked.

Slinky glanced at the door, lowered his voice.

“He's going to go see that rich dude. You know, the guy who gave him the fellowship.”

“Conrad Erringer?”

“Yeah. He figures Erringer will go to bat for him. The dude has the resources to help clear his name, and maybe expose this organization or network, whatever it is.”

“How is he going to get to Erringer?”

“He can't make any phone calls or access a computer. That's why he needed my help. He's got to stay off the grid. So he's going to go to Erringer's house in north Georgia. He plans to meet with the man in person.”

“How is he going to get there?”

“He asked me to help him with some online research. Erringer has a house on a thousand-acre reserve in Bartow County, north of Atlanta. He plans to just go there, find a way into the compound. He's going to get to Erringer directly and tell him the story of what's really going on.”

Martha leaned back, thought about this information. It made sense. Jarrell didn't want to get caught in the gears of a legal system that he didn't trust, not without some powerful help. He'd seen too often that “equal justice” was a myth.

“When is he going?” she asked.

“Day after tomorrow. He'll need the cover of darkness to even get anywhere close to that place without being caught. Erringer's home is heavily guarded because of all the stuff he keeps up there—you know, diamonds and antiques and a lot of rare art. The whole compound is fortified with fences and cameras.”

“Do you think he can make it?”

“We studied some topo maps online, and we found a way for him to get inside. There's a cave system that runs underneath the preserve.”

Martha looked down at the shell in her hands, trying to picture it. “Do you think he can make it?”

“Well, you know Jarrell. He can move like the night.”

An electronic chime sounded, followed by a PA announcement: Morning visiting hours would be over in five minutes.

Martha took Slinky's plump hand and squeezed. “Thank you. I can't begin to tell you how much having this information means to me.”

“There's one more thing.” Slinky reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a black USB drive the size of a piece of gum, and placed it on the desk. It said
SONY
in gray letters on the side.

“You know that website you guys wanted me to hack, the one with the metallic symbol? Well, I finally got through. I was able to get some data that might help Jarrell, but unfortunately, the breakthrough came after our meeting on Wednesday. Jarrell's off the grid again, and I have no way to get this to him. So I'm giving it to you instead.”

“How did you get it?”

“Well, first of all, I figured out that dude Jimmy Lawrence's password. That was the easy part. You can look at the guy's Facebook page for two seconds and see that he's an Atlanta Falcons fanboy. I just had to plug in a few variables to crack his password, with a software assist. Turns out he uses the team name, ‘Falcons,' with a zero in place of the
o,
followed by the number nineteen ninety-eight.”

“How did you get the number?”

“That's the year the team won the conference championship.” He stroked the side of his chin and grinned. “Most folks have no clue how easy their passwords are to suss out, once you get a peek inside their heads.”

“So that got you into the portal?”

“Yeah. He has an account there, just like you guessed. It's a hub for some kind of secret political organization or network, and Lawrence is a member. The site I found was just a small part of it, a forum for communications. There were archives for a lot of discussions, land development deals and that kind of thing. Business stuff. Then I took a peek behind the curtain, at their database configuration. It turns out their admin had neglected to run the latest security patch. So there was a vulnerability, a hole in the digital tent, so to speak, and I wiggled through. Once I was inside the firewall, I was able to tunnel deeper and access their back-end database. I found a directory called ‘Member Data.' I hopped on it and started to download the data.”

Martha leaned forward, gripping the laminate surface of the desk. “That's what's on the USB drive?”

“Some of it. I wasn't behind the firewall for long before the breach was detected and the server was shut down. But I managed to grab a good chunk of data. I have to tell you, though, this is one case where I kind of wish I hadn't gotten through.”

“Why? What did you find?”

“I don't know what the hell it's supposed to be, but there's personal information on about four hundred people. I mean, deep, personal background shit. A lot of the people in the database have criminal records. Felonies. Somebody's keeping files on a whole bunch of dudes. There's a lot of dirt on this stick. It was starting to scare me. But that's not the worst of it.”

Slinky took off his cap, put it in his lap. He wiped his mouth.

Martha leaned toward him. “I have to know.”

“Martha, there's things on his drive that I wish I hadn't seen. Things I can't ever unsee. Images that are going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“What? Information? Pictures?”

Slinky put his cap back on. “Videos. I only looked at a couple of them. I haven't had a good night's sleep since.”

Martha looked out the window, then back at Slinky. “What do they show?”

Slinky swallowed. “Murder. People being killed, in their houses. There's this dude begging for his life….It's just sick.”

“Do you think I should give this to the police?”

“Well, that's your call. I can't get involved in this, or anything that would cause the heat to come around asking questions. I've got to keep my operations on the down-low. So I'm giving it to you to do with as you see fit. I'd give it to Jarrell, but there's no way I can get to him now.”

“Is this the only copy?”

“No, I made a backup, just in case. It's back at my place, but it's encrypted. No one can read the backup without the algorithm.” Slinky glanced toward the door, then looked back at Martha. “I'm taking a chance here, because maybe you can use it to help Jarrell. Just don't tell anybody who copped this data for you, all right?”

“You have my word.”

The PA came on again, announcing that visiting hours had ended.

Slinky stood. “That's about all I can do. I hope our man Jarrell can pull this off. Peace.”

Martha logged in to the computer station with her patient ID, opened a browser window, and pulled up Google Maps. She typed “Erringer Preserve, Georgia” into the search window. A marker pin appeared in the center of a green shaded area near the town of Kingston, north of the Etowah River.

Next she went to a site called TopoZone and found the topographical map of the same region, with fine lines indicating gradations in elevation. There was a highway labeled “Old Kingston Road” that threaded through the hills there. At one point, close to the preserve boundary, the road passed near a spot labeled “historical site.” From there, a broken line led toward a stream. A hiking trail. North of the stream, but still outside the preserve boundary, was a spot marked with a tiny symbol, a horizontal
Y.
Martha had learned a few rudimentary topo-reading skills on hiking excursions with her father, and she vaguely remembered that such a symbol represented something—what? She squeezed her eyes shut.
The letter Y, sideways. A mine shaft or a tunnel…or a cave.

Martha opened her eyes, then clicked and dragged downward, revealing more of the map. Farther north there was a boundary line with the label “Erringer Preserve—Private.” She zoomed out slightly and centered the map so that all of these features—highway, historical site, and cave entrance—were in view. She pressed the “PrtScn” key to capture an image of the screen, then sent the image to the printer.

Next, she took the Sony flash drive from her pocket and inserted it into the USB port on the side of the computer. She clicked on “This PC” on the Windows desktop, then found the removable drive icon. There was only one folder, labeled “Portal Data.” It contained an Excel spreadsheet, which she double-clicked to open. A message window popped up:
UNABLE TO OPEN FILES OF THIS TYPE
.

Along with the spreadsheet was a directory of video files:

Three of the names were chillingly familiar; they had made headlines. They were victims of UNICON—the serial killer who preyed on university professors.

Martha poised her finger over the mouse to open the first movie file on the list, then hesitated. Instead, she right-clicked on the USB icon to eject, then removed the device. She slid the flash drive into the pocket of her slacks.

She logged into her Gmail in the browser window. She had one new message, and the name of the sender produced a cold twinge in the back of her skull: Bernard Somis.

Martha quickly guided the cursor to the email list and clicked to open the message.

I will be out of the office on vacation starting Monday, Oct. 12, and will return Monday, Oct. 19. If you need immediate assistance, contact our department administrator, Brenda Singer, at [email protected].

Martha sat back, folded her arms, and searched her memory.
On vacation.
When they had met with Somis, hadn't he told them he would be out of town for a few days? That he had planned to stay at his cabin in Dillard while he waited for a response from the federal authorities? She scribbled a note in her journal:
Somis scheduled to return Monday.

So he'd left a vacation message. That meant it was possible that no one had yet realized he was missing. In that case, it was only a matter of time before someone would figure it out. On Monday he would not return to work, and people would begin to realize something was wrong. And then, maybe, Gayle would start to believe her story.

Shortly after midnight, Martha lay on her side, pretending to sleep. On the other side of the room, Beulah was snoring like a chainsaw.