Randy Oglesby had gotten a call from Dr. Sanger, who was still out at Hempstead with Stonecoat; in fact, she said they were having lunch at the Hempstead Inn. Randy wondered if all they were having there was on a plate.
“Randy, I want you to push hard for any computer crosses that might link Judge Charles Mootry with Dr. Wesley Palmer and/or Whitaker. Can you do that. Randy?”
“Sure, but what kind of links are we talking?”
“Anything whatsoever. Credit references, organizations they belonged to, schools they attended, you name it.”
“That'll take some time, but sure, I'll get on it.”
“That's why I called you, Randy. I knew you'd be game.”
'This is really big, isn't it, Doctor?”
“I don't know yet.”
'Today's trip of any help?”
“Don't know yet.”
“Gotcha… I'll get right on it.”
And Randy Oglesby was a young man of his word. He had spent several hours after that telephone call running down crosses-cross-references between Mootry, Palmer, and Whitaker-without any clear-cut satisfaction. Some of the information came over while he was on break. He had simply let the machines talk to one another while he grabbed a Snickers and a cup of coffee. When transmission had ended, He stored the new information without going through it. He had a lot of other jobs to attend to today, and it was getting later and later.
An hour later, he sat before his terminal at the Thirty-first, chipping away at the deluge of work left him from previous days. There were notes, articles, and other items to electronically file away. But he quickly grew tired of the case studies and the usual materials coming out of Dr. Sanger's office. In a moment, bored, he was surfing the Internet for news bulletins on deaths by strange arrows around the nation. While he had earlier checked with all police agencies worldwide, including Interpol and the FBI and Scotland Yard, he wondered with fresh eyes if there could be people out there on the Net who might know of any additional bizarre stories involving bows and arrows and murder.
He soon found himself inundated with stories, many of which he recognized for the bullshit they were; some of them were reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons, Doom, and Helsinger's Pit, all games he had played as a child. People out there weren't taking him seriously.
“Oh, yeah, sure, get real,” ridiculed some of the electronic responses. “Hey, Cochise,” shouted another. “Way to go, Geronimo!” came a third.
One message he got was strange and crude. “Keep fucking around with this stuff, Mr. Squeegee,” someone responded to his electronic handle, with no clue as to where his request had originated from, “and you'll get a tempered steel arrow through your goddamned evil heart and another up your ass.”
A second vulgar message said, “We'll scalp your head and your prick, punk.”
Just the ramblings of assholes hanging out their entire lives on the Net, seeking identity, seeking validation, seeking kicks, highs, and even sex in a world of silicone and bytes rather than in a real bed with a real woman, he told himself, shrugging off the threats as childish bullshit.
He turned his mind instead to Darlene and the problem of having discovered that he liked her too much to go on lying to her. Still, he feared what she'd think now if he told the truth, once she learned he was just a computer support person in the department working for Dr. Sanger, and not a detective at all. It was a quandary that had been taking up much of his time lately, and there didn't seem any solution but to tell her the truth, but when, where, and how? he wondered.
He surfed off the Net and got back to his duties. But halfway through a routine case study Dr. Sanger wanted all her notes organized on, his screen went blank. There was no explanation for the interruption. A few bleeps and grinds later, a handful of words suddenly flashed across his screen.
The flashing few words were scary words. They read:
You'llpay dearly, withyourheart'sblood….
Randy swallowed hard. It was one thing to be threatened by computer nerds on the Net; it happened every day. But this was different. Someone had hacked their way into his system. They knew who he was, where he was, and the threat, using the words heart's blood, was a little too close to home, with all these crossbow murders Dr. Sanger and Stonecoat were investigating.
Just as suddenly as the message appeared, it disintegrated into black and the program he had been working on re-appeared.
Randy steeled his nerves and tried desperately to trace the break-in, but whoever it was, he was clever, leaving false trails and no true tracks. Now Randy felt electronically vulnerable for the first time in his life. He felt vulnerable in the real world, too, looking around himself for any sign of intruders who might storm in. He wondered if the place was bugged. He knew that his computer was being monitored.
“Damn,” he cursed. He had a great deal of work to do, and he must do it quickly. He began to make disk copies of all the investigative work he'd done thus far for Dr. Sanger in relation to the crossbow murders. He named the file Crossfire, labeled the two disks he'd filled, and collected them up. He gathered the rest of his things and made his way to the door, prepared to leave the office, taking the disks with him. His feelings of paranoia were running rampant, while one voice in his brain kept saying, “Hey, man, you wanted intrigue; you wanted to be Detective Pardee, asshole.”
Maybe it was just another prank from good ol' Terry and Stephen downstairs in programming and research. Those jerks had too much time on their hands. Yeah, perhaps it was just those two clowns. Maybe he was just overreacting.
But before he turned the doorknob, before he walked out, he decided to take one more step, just for insurance. He returned to his desk, placed the computer disks in a Jiffy Pak, labeled it in longhand, and walked it down to the mailroom. There he found Barney, the affable mailroom guy, and he got the proper postage on the envelope addressed to Dr. Sanger's home.
Barney said he'd shove it in the outgoing mail, but Randy said that he needed to put another item inside, just a note, so he'd take it with him.
Barney waved him good night. Outside the station house, he found the nearest mailbox and mailed the package to Meredyth Sanger, a small voice in his mind saying, I hope this isn't my last natural act on this planet.
“Don't be so dramatic,” he told himself aloud, dropping the package into the slot.
Still, as he walked to his car, he couldn't shake the feeling that people who normally didn't pay him any attention were interested in his every footfall. When he climbed into his car, he snatched out the two disks out of his jacket pocket-he'd only pretended to mail them-and when he put the keys into the ignition, sitting there in the sauna left by day's end, he hesitated, staring at the key. He foolishly wondered if anyone might have placed a car bomb below his little '84 Le Mans. He pleaded with himself to cut it out, to stop this nonsensical paranoia. He wondered if he had the stomach for this James Bond crap.
He bit his lip, grimaced, and manfully turned the key and cranked Lucy-the name he'd playfully given his car after a squat little Aunt Lucy-and expected it to explode in a ball of flame in his face, but nothing of the kind happened.
Maybe it had just been those goof-offs in programming. Sons of bitches…
Dr. Sanger used Lucas's telephone in the Cold Room to ring Randy, but she'd apparently just missed him. She cursed the time. Where had the day gone? She and Lucas had returned to the files here in the Cold Room to look for the tenuous threads between the cases they suspected were related.
But it was late and they'd been frustrated by the lack of connection between the judge, the doctor and the stockbroker.
“It's time to give it up here. Damn,” she muttered. “I hope Randy has more for us from his computer searches.”
“He's bound to. Do you know where he lives?”
“I've got his address, but if all the information is upstairs in the computer, that's not going to help us much.”
“How safe is it, in the computer, I mean?”
“It's coded; has a lock on it.”
“Do you know the code?”
“Yeah, sure I do.”
“Let's have a look-see, then.” They found their way to Dr. Sanger's office. The lights were out, and with a dark, rumbling storm blanketing the city now, the place was like a cave. But there was a light on. Randy's computer screen.
“Randy? Are you still here?” she called out.
Silence was their only response. A window in her office was open, the rain seeping in. Outside, a fire escape revealed nothing. They turned on lights and went to the computer screen. It was blank, filling now with an automatic screen saver, fishes in a coral sea.
“This is just not like Randy, to leave his computer on, and to leave my window open.”
“Maybe it wasn't Randy who left it on.”
“Well, if he rushed out in a hurry…”
“We should locate him.”
She nodded, a ball of gnawing, gloomy concern forming in the pit of her stomach. “Yeah, let's do that.”
764LTl:\C42119\Category… 42 -. -Topic 49LOG…. Message 440… Sat. July 30, 1996… 2:10:21
Questor 1… Helsinger's Pit…
Q1: There is a further threat. A new enemy has risen in perdition this realm, These are two enforcer demons-male and female. They must be stopped. Do all necessary to protect the brothers and sisters and children of Helsinger. Reply this board after evil is wiped out-God's speed to you. Questor 1.
END TRANSMISSION. Category 42, Topic 49LOG… 2:13:26
Category 42…. Topic49LOG… Message 441……Sat. July30,1996…3:55:20
Questor 2… from the Pit…
Q2: Understood. Will take care of perdition's problem.
END TRANSMISSION! Category 42, Topic49LOG… 3:57:02
Category 42…. Topic 41L0G…. Message 442… Sun. July 31…1996… 8:10:01
Questor 1…
Time to take out all threats. Set trap and exterminate the mice. No more fun and games. Eliminate the leaders of our enemy. See message drop, new station.
END FINAL TRANSMISSION THIS EMAIL.