SPYWARE BOOK (17 page)

“You’ll have to leave now, sir,” she said.

Ray nodded, gathered up his equipment, and walked out into the fading light of day with a stream of sleepy, homeless men.

. . . 45 Hours and Counting . . .

There were more National Security staffers hanging around now at the operation’s makeshift headquarters. They had taken up temporary residence in the Yolo county meeting hall. There wasn’t even a school district board meeting until next week, so the space was available. Phones, desks and grim-faced suits had sprouted seemingly from the very walls themselves. There were even some people around from the California State Emergency office in Sacramento. That made her smile, this was no earthquake or flood, but the feeling in the air was similar.

“You know what gets me?” asked Johansen, moving up behind her. He was always at her side, like a big, protective shadow.

“How quickly we’ve lost control of this investigation?”

“No, that’s not surprising, really. What gets me is how quickly the net has become indispensable to this world of ours. It’s part of the infrastructure of our nation now, like the highways or the phone system.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s like some giant has come along and kicked over an anthill.”

Then some of the higher-ups in the more expensive suits noticed them. Italian shoes clacked on the tile as they approached. Introductions were made and a quick briefing was asked for, which she delivered. Gray heads nodded in approval of her play with Sarah Vance. Vasquez could tell that they were being given free rein for now, but if things didn’t move quickly enough, they would be tossed aside in an instant.

Less than a hour later they were walking out into the fresh spring evening. Everything was hot and still. The Delta breezes that normally cooled the region at night were peculiarly absent. The trees stood motionless. Only the chirruping insects seemed happy and full of life.

She looked down at the writ in her hands. She hefted it, then put it into her purse. Beside it was a letter, giving her written permission to investigate the disappearance of Vance, Justin, minor age 6.

“That was really something, wasn’t it?” she asked Johansen.

“The powers that be have taken notice of us lowly mortals,” he replied.

“Wiretap warrants are supposed to be hard to get. And they didn’t even balk at giving us the missing persons case.”

“Not today. There’s a blue-light special in aisle five.”

“You know, I think that if we had gone in there with a request to tap the whole block, we would have gotten it without even a raised eyebrow.”

Johansen nodded as they reached the car. “Some of those guys have a judge in each pocket.”

She looked at him sharply, not liking that kind of talk. “Let’s hope that you’re wrong about that.”

He shrugged and they climbed into the car.

. . . 44 Hours and Counting . . .

“Just burying the kid’s body would’ve been a lot easier,” muttered Spurlock to himself. He hadn’t worked so hard since the joint. Come to think of it, the joint had been less work than this.

Santa had left the backhoe right where he said it would be. The keys were in it, and there were almond trees everywhere, providing cover. Spurlock had learned to operate these things almost ten years ago when he had tried a rare spurt of honest work. The trend hadn’t lasted, but the skill was still there. It took him only a minute or two to prime the old engine and fire it up. Working the levers carefully, he began to dig. With less than another hour’s work, he would have a hole big enough to bury the van.

The big diesel grunted and strained, farting so much blue smoke that the cloud reached forward into the bright cones lit up by the headlights. Black-trunked almond trees stood in guardian rows, and somehow they made Spurlock feel more at ease, more hidden. Overhead, a green canopy covered his deeds from the prying eyes of the stars.

It was a warm spring night that hinted of the blazing Central Valley summer that was to come. The air was absolutely still. He sweated over the controls, wiping his forehead often with a filthy red bandana he’d found tied to the steering wheel. He’d learned all too well why the bandana was there. Each time he wiped he also drank a shot from his squirt-bottle of water. The van was parked on the side of the road, about a hundred yards behind him. Laying beside the growing wound in the earth were two eight-foot lengths of white PVC pipe and a giant roll of duct tape. All he had to do was drive the van into the hole, put the PVC pipe through the little pop-up dome on the top of the van, then bury the whole fucker. The pipe would provide fresh air and allow him to drop food into the van. The duct tape was to seal the pipe so dirt wouldn’t fill the van’s interior.

Spurlock had gotten this idea from an old crime he had read about back in the early eighties. Down in the southern half of the Valley, in a town called Chowchilla, some players had hi-jacked an entire school bus loaded with kids and buried the lot of them in a hole for safe-keeping. They had demanded a ransom, but had eventually blown it and gotten caught. The crime had always impressed him with its simplicity and sheer balls. Spurlock, of course, had no intentions of demanding a ransom. All he wanted was to get the kid out of his hair for awhile so he could move without being hampered.

Running the big scoop up the side of the hole to widen it, he heard the engine strain and rev-up as something resisted the blade. Another big root, he figured. The root snapped and the whole rig rocked a bit. A shower of almonds and twigs fell from the disturbed tree, pelting the cab and Spurlock in discriminately.

“The crazy shit I go through to avoid Murder One,” complained Spurlock, scowling back toward the van. He dragged the filthy bandana across his forehead again and lowered the scoop for another bite of earth.

. . . 43 Hours and Counting . . .

Brenda sucked in her breath suddenly and gave little yelp of surprise and fear.

“It’s okay, Brenda,” Ray whispered into her ear. “It’s just me.”

He felt her relax, but only slightly. He had grabbed her from behind in the dimly lit hallway just outside of the women’s restroom. He felt bad about the tactics, but he couldn’t chance running into anyone else.

“I need your help again, Brenda.”

He felt her relax further as the shock subsided. Then she turned on him. “If you ever try that James Bond shit on me again, you asshole, I’ll ram my knee so far up your crouch you’ll need a kidney transplant!” she hissed at him.

Ray chuckled and look sheepish. “Sorry to scare you, Brenda,” he said. Despite himself, he smiled. It was good to see a familiar face again. Brenda, having a flash of anger, was a very familiar sight. Somehow, it made things feel almost normal again.

“Asshole,” she muttered, “you shouldn’t have come, Ray.”

“Why not?”

She tilted her head toward the glass doors at the end of the hall, indicating the parking lot beyond. “They still come by here every few hours, checking for you.”

“Look, Brenda,” he began, “I haven’t got time to explain it all, but need your help one more time.”

She frowned and turned away from him. She headed toward the lab. Her keys jangled in her hand. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to work in the lab.”

“Yeah.”

She stopped and looked back at him, eyebrows raised. “So that’s it, eh? Just shut old Brenda out? What insanity are you up to now?”

“I’m looking for a reference. I’ve got the handle of the person who I believe has Justin.”

Brenda looked down again, apparently studying her keys. He frowned, knowing that she could have found the right key in a second in a snowstorm. She was stalling. He felt a moment of unease, then it passed as he chided himself for not trusting Brenda. She was just being cautious, that’s all. He was just getting paranoid from being on the run. How odd it all was, he reflected for a disembodied moment. How odd it was to be a fugitive, on the run from the law and looking for other criminals. His quiet, absolutely stable life had turned into a rollercoaster in such a short time.

While his brain wandered, Brenda finally saw fit to locate her key. She stuck it in the lock and twisted. She snapped on the lights and they went to the back where her office and the operators’ stations were.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Any reference to the name Santa, or Snow,” he said. “I want to see if anyone at this campus uses that type of handle.”

She stared at him for a second, then pursed her lips and nodded. He flicked on the monitors and they slowly came to life. The computers were already on, of course. They were never turned off unless there was a hardware failure or a scheduled maintenance shutdown.

He went right to work, first running a series of utilities to search the users for signs of the Huntress, or some other unusual super-user. He saw nothing that indicated that Agent Vasquez was laying in wait for him. She probably figured he was too smart to come back to the college. The thought made him smile. Maybe he was dumber than they thought.

Brenda watched him for a while without helping. She had her hands on her hips.

“What is it, Brenda?” he said without looking up.

“Ray, have you considered giving yourself up?” she asked quietly.

He looked at her. “I’ve got to find my son, Brenda.”

“But the authorities are looking for him. One man running around on the streets of Davis has got to be just distracting the police, rather than helping them. Maybe...” she trailed off.

As satisfied as he could be that no one was watching for him, Ray worked with a utility program to search each of the server hard drives for suspicious handles. Snower, Saint, Snelling and Snowman came up. He clicked on each handle in turn, reading the bio on the person that used the handle. They all turned out to be students, all of them female except for Snowman, who had dropped out of school as a psych major two semesters earlier. Ray had never met any of them to his knowledge. He sighed. What if Santa had nothing to do with the campus? It stood to reason that he was local, otherwise he would probably use a different bulletin board, and wouldn’t have met up with Nog. But what if he was just part of the community, or someone from the coast who Nog had met while making his millions in the gaming industry? A feeling of hopelessness swept over him, but quickly receded as he fought it back. He had to try anything and everything.

Finally, he noticed that Brenda was talking to him again. “They could really use your help Ray, with the virus,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Are you listening?”

“Ah, no. I was just thinking that it’s too bad that the search engines have broken down. I could really use the wider search utilities.”

“Everything is pretty much up again.”

“What? It is?” he asked.

“You’re out of touch. The NSA gave the all-clear two hours ago. That’s why I’m here in the middle of the night on a Friday. Even I have some life, you know.”

Two hours ago.
“Then I’ve been wasting time,” he said. He immediately fired up a web-browser and the University homepage snapped into view. The University system was directly hooked to the net with an optical-fiber T-3 connection. With only a handful of users late Friday night and working on an operator’s station, the net was lightning fast even with all the virus problems.

Ray clicked into Gigablast, one of the less popular internet search engines. He quickly formed up a query and let it rip. It pulled up no less than sixty-two million possible web-pages to investigate. It listed the first twenty for him. Would he like to see the next twenty? At least it asked politely.

Ray sighed. He had to narrow the search. References to Santa were everywhere on the net.

Brenda grabbed his shoulder. He looked up.

“Aren’t you listening to me at all, Ray?” she demanded. Suddenly, he realized that she had been talking for some time.

“I’m sorry, but I’m really under pressure now,” he told her. “If Justin is out there somewhere, trapped somewhere, then he might not make it much longer,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “Of course, they might of... might of...” he swallowed. “They might have killed him already. I know that, but I have to work on the assumption that he is still out there and he needs my help.”

“Ray,” said Brenda, sitting beside him. “I know this is a very hard time for you. But I think you need to let the professionals work on this one.”

He finally looked at her and heard her words. His brow furrowed. “Look, they have twice as much manpower out to get me, the supposed virus-writer, as they do to find my son. I’m not letting anyone do this for me. If they can do it, fine, but if they can’t then I’ll have killed myself trying to do it where they failed. I’m not giving myself up until Justin is found.”

“But I can’t help but thinking that you’re digging a grave for yourself, Ray,” she told him. “If you’re innocent, that will come out in the investigation. You’re just making it all look worse by running.”

“If?” he asked. “Brenda, I am innocent.”

“Of course you are,” she quickly amended, not looking at him.

He turned back to the screen and started another search. “You know, it’s funny. Whenever someone is accused of something, people right away assume that there must be a grain of truth to it.”