Mortal Fear (34 page)

He opens his hands. Whatever you say. But Ive got to ask. Are you saying you want Erin as your on-line alias, or the real name behind the alias?

On-line alias. You can make her legal name anything you want.

Miles digests this slowly. Im not even going to ask where this is coming from. Youre playing the role, you pick the costume. But arent you worried that using Erin might somehow lead Brahma to her?

No. Because it wont really be Erin. Its going to be a blend of Erins personality and mine. A hybrid. And the fact that the alias is Erin should make Brahma think her real name is anything
but
Erin.

Youre right, he says, looking impressed for once.

Its your job to create a fake identity thats untraceable. And the address worries me. I know you can do a lot by hacking, but you cant change where we are. What if Brahma can actually trace the phone connections?

I dont think he can. Not easily, anyway. But even if he tries, Ill have it covered.

How?

Im going to hack into AT&Ts Jackson switching station, change around some number and address data. Then Ill make that data match the Erin stuff I put into the DMV computer and everywhere else.

I thought telephone switching stations had gotten practically impenetrable.

Some have. But Ill bet Mississippis had the fewest attempted penetrations of any state in the U.S. He smiles. And they definitely arent ready for me, Grasshopper.

Im asking for one promise, Miles.

What?

Drewe knows nothing about what were trying to do. Nothing. I dont care what we tell her, but its not going to be this.

He holds up his hands. You think Im nuts?

This is illegal and we both know it.

Yeah. But weve got to do it. Wicked blue light flashes in his eyes. And its going to be the mother-fucking rush of all time.
Wow
.

A surge of adrenaline pushes me over to the left front window. I have to fight the urge to peek around the blinds to see whether there are any deputies standing in the dark yard.

Can I ask you one thing? Miles says. One thing, then I shut up for good.

One thing, I say to the window blind.

This Erin thing. Were talking about something in the past, right? You and her.

Yes.

I thought so.

I turn from the window to ask how far back in time his suspicions began, but he is already hunched over the keyboard at my desk. By tomorrow morning a digital human being that backs up my Erin will exist in the bureaucratic agar that forms the basis of legal existence in America. Miless groundwork will accomplish Brahmas initial suspension of disbelief. But far more important than a Social Security number or address will be the woman I carry in my mind and heart. A carnal phantom called Erin still wanders unbidden through my dreams, and though I am not sure how or why, I know that through me, she can haunt the ruthless killer we have christened Brahma to his grave.

My chief fascination in the days following Miless appearance was listening to the baroque mating ritual between Maxwell and Lilith. From the worldly wise but bitter woman who endured a college gang bang, Lenz quickly expanded his creation into a multidimensional character worthy of a Christmas appearance on
Oprah
. Sometimes Lilith taunted Maxwell, other times she passively answered whatever questions he put to her, however personal. I decided Lenz must be drawing his emotional raw material from actual case histories; much of it had the outrageous ring of truth that only reality can provide, incidents that would get any decent fiction writer drummed out of his profession. Through it all, Maxwell probed Liliths past with lapidary precision, a twist here, a light tap there, gradually forming a picture of the woman who lay behind the alias.

Miles spent most of the first day building the digital skeleton that would support my fictional Erin. We chose the legal name Cynthia Griffin and decided to place her address in Vicksburg, which lies forty miles southwest of Rain. We discussed the chance that a Mississippi address might give Brahmas intuition a tickle, but word-of-mouth among my old friends had brought the number of Mississippi EROS clients to more than thirty. Miles thought that was more than enough to make one new addition quite natural.

Once Cynthiaspersonal information had been hacked into the proper government computersand an EROS account opened in her nameMiles began coding away at his Trojan Horse program, consuming massive amounts of Mountain Dew and granola bars ferried by
Drewe from the Yazoo City K-Mart. He rarely sat in front of his computer to do his coding. After Drewe left for work each morning, he would commandeer an easy chair in the darkened den and, fortified by junk food, sit glassy-eyed through three or four old movies on the satellite channels. His favorites seemed to be disaster movies from the nineteen-seventies, la
Airport
and
The Towering Inferno,
melodramatic extravaganzas featuring faded Hollywood legends. Now and then he would jump up and hurry into my office, sit down before his laptop, and punch in a few keystrokes, cocking his head at odd angles and murmuring to himself.

Drewe worked every day, but she called frequently to see how the check on the female blind-draft account holders was going. About midnight on the second night, Jan Krislov e-mailed us, saying that the fifty-two blind-draft women showing low account activity in the past months had all been verified as alive and well. So had more than three hundred of the remaining blind-draft women. This punched a gaping hole in Drewes theory of another missing woman, and by extension her pineal transplant theory. Or so we thought.

When we told Drewe about Jans message, she was standing at my office door, about to leave for work. She looked blank for about thirty seconds; then her eyes flickered with knowledge.

I was so
stupid,
she said. The missing woman couldnt be an EROS client. The EROS population isnt large enough to allow selection of tissue-matched donors. You see? The killer could do all the surgical practice he wanted on EROS women, but when it came time to match a donor to a recipient, he had to search a much larger population.

Why? asked Miles.

Probability. Donor networks require pools of thousands
tens
of thousandsof potential donors, so that exact matches can be found for those in need of organs or tissue. After the killer kidnapped Rosalind Mayhis intended recipienthe had to tissue-type her, then find a donor of the right age who was a match. The twenty-five hundred women on EROS arent nearly a large enough
group to get a match. Actually, he would need a tissue donor registry. Like for bone marrow. Transplant networks list people who
need
organs, not people who want to donate them. And drivers license computers might list organ donors, but not any of the medical information the killer needs.

So where would he find a group like that? Miles asked.

Drewe shrugged. A legitimate tissue donor network. Or directed donors listed with blood banks. Those are the only kinds of databases that would have the medical information hed need.

While Miles pondered this, Drewe stared at me as if waiting for me to say something. When I didnt, she looked at Miles and said, Weve got to tell the FBI to start checking tissue donor registries.

He looked at me, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of contacting the FBI.

Can we do it anonymously? I asked her.

She sighed deeply, then pulled her keys from her pocket and walked away. She slammed the front door on her way out.

At my request, Miles agreed to compose a summary of Drewes theory and sneak it into the Quantico computer. I suggested using an anonymous remailing service to send the message, but Miles thought the FBI could get at us through the operator if they tried hard enough.

Later that day, a running argument developed between us as to whether Brahma was actually being taken in by Lenz, or whether he was making a fool of him. Id begun to notice what I thought was dry humor in Maxwells conversations with Lilith. Most of it was double entendre so subtle as to be arguable, yet I believed it significant. Ever since Miles pointed out the Maxwells Silver Hammer and Levon connections, Id felt Brahma was toying with us. Not just Lenz, but everyone who had committed the hubris of stepping up to the plate against him.

Miles, on the other hand, thought Lenz was doing very well, considering the time pressure he was under, and pointed out that I had yet to draw Brahma into a single
on-line conversation. To speed up this process, he carried his laptop to the easy chair in the front room and, during an encore showing of
The Thomas Crown Affair
on A&E, hammered out a search program based on Brahmas most common figures of speech. He claimed it would locate Brahma on-line regardless of the alias he was using, and it did. However, it could not draw him into conversation with me.

The police surveillance of our house continued, and by the third day cabin fever had set in. Miles insisted that my phones were tapped. And it wasnt enough that he remain indoors. He demanded that I check one window on each side of the house every half hour and also that I leave the house occasionally to create the appearance of normalcy. I understood the necessity, but it became a major pain to constantly jump up from my computer while he sat watching
The Poseidon Adventure
like some Arabian potentate.

Yet it was tougher on him than on me. Hed promised Drewe that he would clear out at the first sign of trouble, and I knew he meant it. Like a fireman or a fighter pilot, he had to stay pumped enough to jump up from a dead sleep and race into the kitchen pantry for the trapdoor that led to the bomb shelter.

So it was almost a divine deliverance when, at eleven p.m. on the third night, the long-awaited invitation from Brahma arrived. Id been in the lobby of one of EROSs conference areas, politely fending off not-so-polite advances from a man calling himself Billy Pilgrim, when a small window opened on my screen. The words inside it read:

My heartbeat racing, I tried to think clearly. Id debated whether or not to use the voice-recognition unit. Ultimately, I decided that being able to speak my thoughts into the computer rather than type them was worth arousing whatever suspicion Miless voice-rec program
might cause in Brahma. Speaking as clearly as I could, I said, Yes. How did you know?

On the screen appeared:

There was a brief silence. Then three new lines of text appeared, and the voice Id selected for Brahma said:

Miles had given me good ammunition for this question.

My heart thudded against my breastbone. After saying yes, I sent a rude kiss-off to Billy Pilgrim, then clicked my way into digital privacy with a man who had killed at least eight people, and probably more.

Brahma was waiting when I arrived.

I paused to compose myself. During the long days of waiting, Id given much thought to how I would approach
Brahma. In the end, I knew, I would have to fly purely on instinct. But as with any new relationship, my opening was critical.

The speakers fell silent. Then Maxwell resumed his questioning.