Johansen finished his call and nodded. “Just not the way she hoped it was.”
… 33 Hours and Counting…
It had taken Ray more than an hour to get from the campus to Brenda’s place. She lived on the outskirts of town, in one of the more recently developed areas of Davis. In Davis, that meant that the houses had been built in the sixties and seventies. Unlike most California towns, Davis carefully controlled and restricted its growth. The University and the kind of people who liked to live near it didn’t want the run-away strip-malls and cracker box land development that personified most of the Valley. Instead, the city council doled out building permits like scotsmen with rusty purses.
Under normal circumstances, Ray would have enjoyed the walk. The sky was clear, the delta breezes had returned, and it seemed like a perfect Spring day. As it was, his head rang and his legs felt like rubber crutches. Brenda’s dead eyes haunted his thoughts. The sights and sounds of Spring were lost on him.
Brenda’s car he had left in the parking lot. Driving her car around, he figured, wouldn’t be a very good idea anyway. It couldn’t but make his case harder if he was apprehended while driving the car of the woman he was accused of murdering. It was bad enough that he had the murder weapon shoved into the front pocket of his faded jeans. His only precaution had been to pull out his plaid shirt so that the tails hung down over the gun butt.
He reached Bovine and took a left turn onto Starling Lane. Overhead, the sun tried to hurt him. The morning sun had that blue glare to it, not the softer yellows and oranges of the late afternoon that he would have greatly preferred. Like a thousand hung-over people that day, he swore the sun was brighter and crueler first thing in the morning than any other time of the day. For him, of course, it wasn’t a hang-over but a concussion that tortured his skull. All in all, he thought he would have preferred the hang-over.
He had decided to go by Brenda’s on the way to Ingle’s place, which was out in the country beyond the city limits to the north. He wanted to go by Brenda’s on a hunch. Sure, the police might be there, but he doubted they would stay too long. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t. What he hoped to do was beat the police and run into Ingle’s. He was fairly sure that the bastard would try to plant something to further implicate him, the way he had planted disks related to the virus at his home. Maybe, just maybe, Ingle’s would be too smart for his own good this time. Maybe he would try a little too much finesse. Ray had always believed that the simplest plans were the best plans, and he was about to try and make the theory pay.
Besides his reasoning, he just didn’t know what else to do. He had identified the virus’ author and the man pulling the strings, but still had no clue as to Justin’s whereabouts. Except for one thing: Ingle’s knew the truth.
So, logically, Ingle’s knew he would come looking for him, and that Ray couldn’t afford to wait around. All he could hope was that Ingle’s expected him to drive straight to his quaint ranchette. He would be ready for that. But possibly, he wouldn’t be ready for a man on foot to visit Brenda’s. Ray’s only plan was to make fast, simple, unexpected moves from here on in.
He stopped at Raven Court. He looked down toward Brenda’s place. He saw no evidence of cops or Ingles. A few cars and people were about, mostly kids. It was Saturday, which meant that several children were out riding their bikes around in an endless circle at the end of the court. The rest were probably watching morning cartoons while their parents filled dishwashers and fired-up lawnmowers. It hurt him to see such a normal, painless neighborhood. It made him homesick.
Deciding not to stand there staring like a homeless drifter for too long, he walked across the court, but didn’t enter it. He went instead to the park at the end of Starling Lane. He crossed a line of chained cement posts and approached Brenda’s place from the park side. He had to count chimneys to make sure he had the right house.
Throwing caution to the wind, he vaulted the redwood fence. It hurt more than he thought it would. Ten years ago he would have sailed over it, but now, with his woozy head, it was all he could do to fall in a panting heap on the far side. His stomach went into the spin cycle on him, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten anything in more than twelve hours. He struggled up and checked the painful lump in his pocket. The gun was still there, and had yet to blow his nuts off by accident, a thought that now haunted him as he headed for the sliding glass door.
His mind felt as glassy as the door. Why was it that every California home built in the last century had at least one sliding glass door in the back? He wondered about it vaguely.
The slider was locked and had a broomstick in the track. Brenda had been security-conscious. A shitload of good it had done her last night, he thought.
He walked around the yard, checking the windows. He stopped when he got to the garage side door that led into the backyard. It was hanging open. Gouged wood showed where it had been forced open.
… 32 Hours and Counting…
There was someone inside the garage. Ray heard something go over, something big, like a box full of books, maybe. There was a whump, then a luffing, skittering sound. A muttered curse followed.
Taking a deep breath, Ray closed his eyes to the count of five, then pulled Ingles’ pistol out of his pocket. He half-hoped he would be forced to shoot the bastard, although he doubted that it would help his case any.
He stepped around the corner like a cop in any good crime movie. He stood with both hands on the gun, his legs spread apart. He had no more training with a gun than what he recalled from childhood, plinking endlessly at birds with his daisy. After the initial rush of victory, he had felt bad the few times he had actually hit one. He couldn’t help wondering at that moment how it would feel to kill a man.
The sight that greeted him was unexpected. Instead of cool, calm Ingles, his cigarette thrusting from his mouth, he saw Nog. Or rather, he saw Nog’s hindquarters. The man was doubled over, digging through boxes in the garage. There was an air of frantic energy about him that Ray had never seen before. He wore a striped tee-shirt, yellow rubber kitchen-gloves and a vast blue stretch of cloth that served him as shorts.
Brenda had always been something of a packrat. The garage, like much of her house, was stuffed with junk. Books, disks, dolls, paint cans, tools, broken furniture, garden implements and towering stacks of magazines were strewn about in wild profusion. Nog went through the disks more carefully, than the rest, but still, everything he touched was soon tossed aside as if in disgust.
Ray watched him dig for perhaps a minute. Every so often Nog lurched up and gazed about him, checking the window that gave a view of the front porch. He didn’t look directly behind him, however, and so missed Ray’s presence at the doorway. After a quick, furtive look around, he put his hand on his flabby back and moaned as if exhausted and strained. Then he doubled over again, rummaging through yet another box that he had pulled down from Brenda’s dusty shelves.
“What’cha looking for, Nog my man?” Ray asked him casually.
The effect was electric. Nog straightened from a large box of cords and computer parts. He half-whirled, half-fell as he turned to face Ray. Junk flew from his gloved fingers. A ribbon cable dangled from his left hand like a scrap of uneaten spaghetti.
“Oh shit,” breathed Nog. “You almost gave me a heart attack Vance, you asshole.”
“That makes twice in one week,” acknowledged Ray.
“You should just get the fuck out of here while you can, man,” said Nog, breathing hard.
“What are you doing here?”
“Look, you stupid mother-” here, Nog halted. He seemed to notice the gun for the first time. Ray had loosened up his cop stance and now held it nonchalantly.
“Oh, hey man,” stammered Nog. He shuffled back a step and almost fell into a stack Vogue magazines as high as his waist. “I didn’t do Brenda, man. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Let me ask you again, Nog,” said Ray earnestly. He let his fingers work at the grip of the gun while he spoke. “Why are you here?”
“I’m just looking for-stuff.”
Ray took two steps forward. He watched the other’s reaction as Nog noticed the bloodstains that ran down his neck from his head wound. “What kind of stuff?”
Nog worked his tongue nervously. “Stuff like, ah-disks and chips.”
“Incriminating stuff?” asked Ray, he nodded, taking Nog’s shrug as evidence enough. “So why would it be here? Was Brenda in on all this then?”
Nog snorted. “Of course not,” he snapped.
“No, no, of course not. She was no hacker,” said Ray, “In fact, she hated your kind, didn’t she? The festering spiders out there on the web. The ones that dream up ways to lure teens to bus stations and vandalize the honest work of others.”
“You going to shoot me or what, Vance?” asked Nog.
“You have more balls than you know, asking that question,” said Ray.
Nog opened his mouth. His ancient braces glinted, but he shut up again, saying nothing.
“Good. All I want to hear from you is answers. Let’s see now, you came here to find evidence. The evidence must incriminate you, or you wouldn’t bother to leave your lair. Besides which, I’ve never seen you work so hard in your life. With me so far?”
Nog wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his yellow glove. He nodded and glanced out the front window again. “We have to get out of here, Vance,” he said.
“All I can think of is the source code of the virus, something linking you to it. Am I on the right track?”
“Yeah, you’re a regular no-shit-Sherlock, man. I couldn’t find it, and I’ve been at it all night. We have to get out of here now though, man.”
“Why’s that?”
Nog pointed out the window. Ray sighted along the rubber finger. He saw a small black plastic box. It sat outside the window in the branches of a small liquid amber tree. On the top of it, a red light blinked.
“What the heck is that?”
“A cop-detector,” explained Nog. “It detects radio emissions on the cop bandwidths. Any car that transmits inside of a half-mile is picked up.”
“So, you’re telling me that the cops are coming.”