The Program (56 page)

Tim rode a rush of people away from the stage. Dray and Janie were up in each other's faces, yelling like a baseball coach and an umpire squaring off over a bad call. Dray spotted Tim coming and peeled out toward Prospace.

She reached the Protectors before Tim, feigning panic. "A big fight just broke out on the landing!" she shouted over the din.

Both guys looked for TD, but he'd vanished into a mob of blue-shirts at the foot of the stage.

Bederman arrived, winded. "The Pros at the check-in desk sent me to get help. A brawl just broke out."

The Protectors forged off through the scattering crowd.

Tim shoved through the curtain into Prospace. Six blue-shirts were furiously packing up. Facing away, Leah was bent over the sound board, desperately working the dials, her hand covering her earpiece to try to hear what was going on. Tim called out once, his voice lost in the commotion, then he grabbed her shoulder and spun her, her hair flying and settling around the wrong face.

Shanna.

"Where's --" He caught himself in time, then peered around.

No sign of Leah -- that explained the bad lighting during the theatrics. Had she been caught searching for evidence? Was she dead? Had she changed her mind?

Shanna looked at him, squinting to see through the disguise. "Tom?"

Dray and Reggie fanned out, shoving off approaching Pros and checking behind the crates and wardrobes. Bederman shot out the emergency exit but came back shaking his head.

Dray said loudly, "TD's not back here."

Tim picked up the protective charade. "We'll get him in the lobby."

They stormed out. Sweat trickled down Tim's sides as they crossed the ballroom, stepping out onto the landing. Demanding their money back, furious participants mobbed the five frazzled blue-shirts working the cash boxes.

Janie was dressing down one of the Protectors for manhandling a Neo. "We can't afford that kind of behavior, especially now."

Lorraine and a cluster of group leaders sat shocked by the elevators, weeping as if someone had pulled into their hamlet on a Harley and told them God was dead.

"It's not possible," she murmured. "It's not possible."

Tim and Dray spilled down the stairs with the stream of deserters. Outside, Pros milled around, lost but seeking contact, the bizarre scene like the parking-lot prelude to an AA meeting. Blue polos rained down like graduation caps. Wendy tugged hers off and flung it, hopping up and down in her undershirt with a few other Pros.

Bederman and Reggie caught up to Tim and Dray, and they circled to the rear lot and climbed into the Blazer. Janie, Sean, and a few diehards were shouting for the Pros to get ready to leave, but the two Program buses remained largely empty.

Tim fumbled Dray's phone out of the glove box -- she'd wisely left it behind -- and dialed Will's number.

"Where the hell have you been?" Will greeted him. "I left you twenty fucking messages."

"They made me surrender my phone like last time," Tim said. "We didn't get her. She wasn't there."

"I know. I got an e-mail from her. She's in trouble."

As Dray pulled out, TD emerged from the fire exit, shirt untucked. His perfect posture had eroded; he stood stooped, shoulders wilted.

Reggie rolled down the window as they passed and extended his middle finger.

"Marco's en route," Will said. "Get here as fast as you can."

TD's eyes found Tim in the passenger seat. The Blazer veered around a celebratory huddle of liberated Pros. TD smoothed his shirt-tails back into his pants, his shoulders pulling square, and watched with a cool, dead stare until they turned the corner.

Chapter
fifty

The Blazer pulled through the Hidden Hills gate right behind Tannino's Bronco, the two vehicles caravanning to the house. High noon blazed off the hood of the Blazer, the temperature climbing toward ninety. L.A. summers came on fast and hard, sometimes overnight.

Tannino shook his head as Tim and Dray approached him on the walk -- he didn't know anything yet. He looked past them at Bederman and Reggie and said, "Wait out here, please, until we know what's going on."

Rooch opened the door before they could knock and led them in. A cast encasing his arm to the biceps, Doug offered Tim a peacemaking head flick of a greeting. From deep in the house, the muffled sound of Emma's crying overlapped with the baby's screams.

Will sat cocked back in his mesh chair, working his cheek with the cap of a pen. His eyes stayed on the computer monitor as they entered.

They circled behind him. His e-mail account was up on the screen, three messages from [email protected] occupying the in-box. They'd each come with an attachment, judging from the already-downloaded icons on the desktop -- two jpeg photos and an mpeg video clip.

Tim's head buzzed, an ache cramping the temples. Judging from the look on Will's face, he did not want to know what the e-mails held.

Will double-clicked on the first jpeg. A photo appeared, resolving slowly in several waves. The potbellied stove in Randall and Skate's shed, the loading door open to reveal burned fragments of mail amid mounds of ash. Fluorescent yellow scraps from Tannino's mailing stood out against the soot. Tannino tapped the screen eagerly, indicating them. "This establishes time frame."

The second jpeg showed the shed from outside, TD's cottage in the backdrop.

Tim's hands were shaking with excitement.

Tannino flipped open his phone.

"Wait." Will still did not look up at them.

He clicked the mpeg. The little clock icon seemed to blink interminably as the segment loaded. The image popped up, Leah hunched in front of the computer in the mod, staring into the QuickCam mounted atop the monitor. The glow from the screen lit the room a pale blue. One of the file drawers to her right sat open. Over her shoulder the ceiling was barely visible and the dark, offset pane of the skylight.

The time stamp on the e-mail said 4:41 A.M.

Just before the colloquium had begun, when TD and the other Pros were heading down to the Radisson. Tim wondered how in hell she'd managed to get her hands on a telephone cord to send out the e-mails.

She spoke with hushed urgency. "I couldn't get enough time alone to get done what I needed to, so I screwed up the Web site launch to make TD ground me from the colloquium. I'm sorry I couldn't get word to you, but I figured it was worth the risk to get more time up here with most everyone gone. Will, you should have downloaded two digital photos by now." She glanced nervously behind her, though the mod was empty. "And show Tim this, too." She held up a piece of paper.

Tannino said, "Pause that."

Will froze and enlarged the image. TD's letterheaded memo became clear.

1. 1. Mail is to be picked up at the P.O. box every two days.

2. 2. Mail should be delivered to the Teacher's cottage and set inside the front door to the right.

3. 3. When the Teacher is done sorting through it, he will place it to the left of the door.

4. 4. Mail is to be picked up and disposed of in the stove in the shed.

5. 5. Mail should never be opened by anyone other than the Teacher.

The list continued, thirteen points in all, punctuated by TD's flowery signature.

"Holy Mary." Tannino flipped open his phone and started punching numbers. "There's our hook. They'll be renting his ass in Men's Central by the end of the week."

Dray kept her eyes on Will. "What's the problem?"

Will's hand slid over and clicked the mouse again, unfreezing the mpeg.

Leah hopped up and returned the memo to its place, sliding the file drawer quietly closed. She came back over and leaned in front of the QuickCam. "I found" -- she swallowed hard -- "I found a letter you wrote me, Will, scanned into the computer." Her eyes moistened. "I wanted you to know I read it. TD stole it just to pervert the personal parts, use them against me." Her tone hardened. "I have more information for Tim, but nothing I could send out fast, so I figured I'd get you what was concrete and fill you in on the rest when you get here. Now, don't worry. I erased the digital photos and the e-mails I sent. I even programmed this one to delete as soon as it's sent."

Dray gasped, which she rarely did. Tim turned to her in surprise, but she pointed at the screen.

In the background the faint reflected light on the doorknob behind Leah began to shift. The door eased open, and a dark, bulky figure slid into the room. Leah remained leaning forward, oblivious.

The shadow inched toward her, a fall of light unmasking an edge of Skate's leering face. He took another silent step forward as Leah smiled into the mini camera.

"I'm perfectly safe."

She reached for where the mouse would be, and the video went to black.

Chapter
fifty-one

While Tim went out of his mind with impatience, Winston reviewed and reworded the affidavits that Tim had drafted while bouncing in the passenger seat of Tannino's Bronco on the way over. They caught the magistrate judge, a white-haired fixture of the court named Judith Seitel, on the bench; she considered Tannino's mad gesticulations in the back of the gallery with mild amusement before signaling them to wait for her outside chambers until she could break away.

Tim, Dray, Tannino, and Winston Smith sat like schoolchildren, lined on a wooden bench in the courthouse corridor. Their cell phones chirped every few seconds like angry insects. To ensure that the operation would be locked and loaded by the time they arrived at the pre-step-off point with search and arrest warrants in hand, Tannino alternated calls between Miller, who'd activated the ART squad, and the station captain at La Crescenta, whose sheriff's deputies serviced Sylmar.

It was already after three o'clock -- every minute passed with kidney-stone agony. Tim tried to keep his mind off what was being done to Leah right now as they waited in the air-conditioned hallway. If she was still alive.

Winston flipped through the search-warrant affidavit, reviewing it a final time. "You'll only be authorized to search the shed, Betters's cottage, and the modular office where the memo was stored and the mail scanned -- the areas relevant to mail destruction and theft."

"We've got to be able to look for Leah, too," Tim said.

Winston nodded sagely. "Given this is an armed camp, known members of which we've already charged with kidnapping a federal officer, you can take extra precautions to assure your safety. It might be prudent and reasonable to move cottage to cottage to neutralize potential threats."

"Can we seize the computer in the mod?"

"We have to find something incriminating on it first. The warrant should clear you to click around, look for mail-related evidence, like the scanned stolen letter Leah mentioned. Get in, get something concrete, then you can take it into evidence and spend more time with it in the lab." He winked. "Then we can get into the Dead Link files we don't yet know are stored on the hard drive. Let's hope they put out for us."

Tannino nodded at Tim. "We'll bring Frisk from ESU in case he has to do some hacking."

Tim checked his watch again.

"I hate to be the one to say it," Dray said, "but what if she's already dead? I mean, Betters wasn't coming back to the ranch in the best mood after we clusterfucked his colloquium. She might be six feet under in the woods."

Tannino paused from his call, tucking the receiver to his neck. "We need cadaver dogs."

"You can't bring cadaver dogs to investigate destruction of the mails," Winston said. "It doesn't fall under the warrant's scope."

"The mail charges buy us dick at sentencing. I want a body."

"Then you'd better hope you trip over one."

Tim tilted his face into his spread hands, working the angles like a Chinese puzzle box. He pictured Skate and Randall marching Nancy into the woods, her pale hand clutching the shovel that was to bury her corpse. His head snapped up. "We're short a dog."

Tannino said, "Hold on," into the phone and shot Tim an inquisitive stare.

"Precious is injured," Tim continued. "We're short a dog. We ask the sheriff's department to supply one of their own since they're backing us up on the entry."

"Cover your ears, Win," Tannino said.

The AUSA shook his head and trekked down the hall. Tannino nodded for Tim to continue.

"We make sure they supply a patrol dog that's also a cadaver dog. Then we make sure it does its scent work in the process of securing the camp."

"Are there double-duty dogs?" Tannino asked. "And handlers who are deputies?"

Dray was already dialing. "They're mostly weekend warriors, but Mac's got a deputy buddy over at Walnut who works Canine, too."

"It's an armed camp," Tannino said. "We had to sweep the woods with dogs for our own safety, Your Honor. One of them just happened upon the dead body."

Tim said, "Precisely."

"I always said you should've been a lawyer, Rackley."

"Looks like I'll have plenty of time for a career change."

"This thing goes smooth, you might not have to worry about a career change." Tannino met Tim's puzzled gaze. "We pop Betters, there's gonna be a lot of tail wagging up the chain. Maybe I get my way."