Bound by Mystery Page 3

  The thought made my stomach cramp, and I felt a trickle of sweat running down the back of my shirt, but I didn’t drop to my knees and vomit my guilt into the long grass. Though I hadn’t ever talked to him, I still knew the dead guy better than his neighbors ever did.

  The world was a better place without him in it. That’s why I chose him.

  I prefer victimless crimes, so I don’t normally steal identities. I just borrow them from time to time. Most credit card companies don’t even bother chasing down the loss of a few grand—they just chalk it up to the cost of doing business—but when you jump from credit card to credit card as much as I do, the odds are against you. Eventually there will be a trail and, unless it leads to somebody else, before you can say the last four digits of your Social Security number, you’re the schmuck doing time alongside real criminals.

  The buoyant body belonged to Manny Nolan, and he was a pedophile.

  They’re easy to find online, so after a simple hack into his e-mail account and a hop, skip, and a click across the seedier side of the Web, I knew more than I wanted to about Manny’s site travels and extracurricular activities. The cache of child porn on his hard drive could earn him a felony, and although he hadn’t acted on his impulses yet, it was just a matter of time. He’d started posting on craigslist and lesser-known sites with just the right slang, doing some fishing of his own.

  I may not be one of the good guys, but if someone hadn’t caught up with Manny before I shed his slimy skin for a new identity, I was going to leave a trail that even a federal agent with a seeing-eye dog could follow.

  But I wasn’t planning to torture him and dump him in a river. Maybe his sins warranted this kind of personal attention, but somehow this didn’t feel personal. The setup felt professional.

  A simple algorithm sent me copies of any messages sent to Manny, so I could monitor his activity to make sure my cover wasn’t blown. So a week prior I saw the Facebook message inviting him to the party at the warehouse, and then I saw the photo posted to his Instagram account the next day, the warehouse burned to the ground.

  And then I saw the e-mail with a simple attachment, a jpeg of a car trunk. Inside the trunk was an extra car battery, jumper cables, duct tape, and a serrated hunting knife. In the text of the e-mail were GPS coordinates to this spot on the river.

  The subject line simply said: Looking for Manny’s Black Hat.

  A hacker like me is a black hat, Internet slang drawn from the analog world of Westerns, when the bad guy wore a black Stetson as he rode into town to rob the bank. Like I said, I never claimed to be one of the good guys. The messages were sent to Manny’s account but were meant for me.

  Manny wasn’t a victim, he was a warning.

  I did the only sensible thing a person confronted with their own mortality can do. I drove into town and found the nearest bar.

  ***

  It wasn’t hard to find because my uncle owned it, and I’d sat on the stool at the far end of the bar a thousand times. After Mom passed on, Ben retired as a plumber, took the money she left him, and bought the bar where he worked. His old fishing rods adorned the walls, and a pair of oars made a giant X over the door to the bathroom. A wide-mouthed bass hung over the door, but fortunately it wasn’t the kind that sang or talked. It just gaped in disbelief over dying so young despite swimming every day.

  Ben saw the look on my face and poured a Macallan on the rocks without my having to ask, or pay. Neither of us said anything at first. I worked my whisky as Ben worked the bar.

  A lone customer halfway down the bar ordered a beer, and I watched as Ben popped the top with his thumb, even though it was an import without a twist-off cap. I loved my uncle. And like any sane person, I really didn’t want to piss him off.

  After my second whisky was nothing more than a liquid memory, my tongue was loose and the bar was empty. It was the dead time between lunch and dinner. My uncle locked the door and returned to his spot near the well.

  I told Ben everything. He listened patiently, face expressionless as he wiped down the bar and polished the taps. After I’d finished spilling my guts and he’d finished drying the glasses, Ben came around the bar and sat on the stool next to me.

  He put his right hand on my shoulder and gave me a squeeze that would make a lump of coal piss diamonds.

  “You’re an idiot,” he said.

  But he said it with a smile. Almost.

  “Ever see a pilot fish?” he asked.

  “The little fish that swims with the sharks.”

  He nodded. “You know why the sharks leave them alone?”

  I shook my head.

  “They eat parasites off the shark’s body, go around snacking all day on tiny critters that attach to a shark’s skin.” My uncle paused to make sure I was paying attention. “And in return, the sharks don’t eat them. When the sharks eat somebody else—usually a much bigger fish—the pilot fish get to eat any scraps the sharks leave behind.”

  “Not a bad deal.”

  “You’re too smart to act so lazy.”

  “Thanks, sort of.”

  “We spent all that time on your education, what’s the return on that investment?” Ben ran his hand through his hair, graying at the temples. “A short ride in somebody’s trunk?”

  I shrugged. “You’re saying these guys are sharks.”

  “Great whites.” Ben brought his hands together and cracked his knuckles. It sounded like the Fourth of July. “You’ve been to the gas station near the bridge, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Every credit card reader on the pumps is a skimmer,” he replied. “Captures the card number and PIN, feeds it into a database. The Russians have been running it for a year.”

  “So you think it’s the Russians.”

  “At the train station,” Ben continued, ignoring me, “near the ticket kiosks. Look for a couple of kids with a mobile scanner, moving through the crowd. Same kind of operation, only the kids are stringers working for the Azerbaijani mob.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not okay.” Ben shifted on his stool. “The guys from the old neighborhood, my former classmates…” My uncle drew a breath. He never said the word mafia when I was growing up, but he once admitted he was the only one of his childhood friends who hadn’t left town or done time behind bars. “I hear identity theft brings in a third of what they make these days. Instead of extorting a store owner for protection, why not press them to install a custom card reader at the register?”

  My bar stool suddenly felt like it was sinking. “You’re kidding.”

  “Welcome to the big-time,” said Ben.

  “But a pilot fish—”

  “—is useful for a while. Then it gets annoying.” Ben flexed his fingers in a graceful wave—Swan Lake, as performed by sausages. “You kept the banks distracted, splashed around enough to distract the fraud investigators or Feds from seeing the apex predators lurking just below the surface.”

  “But now…”

  “Who knows?” Ben shrugged. “Maybe one of the gangs is getting greedy. The reasons things go sideways usually aren’t that complicated. Maybe somebody’s making a move and you’re caught in their wake.”

  “Can we stop with the fish metaphors?”

  “It’s my bar,” replied Ben. “When you own the bar you can use whatever analogies or similes you want.”

  “A simile is when you say like or as—”

  “—stop interrupting.” He scowled. “They say sharks never eat the pilot fish, because the relationship is mutually beneficial, but fishermen mostly see them near the coast. You know what I think?”

  I knew a rhetorical question when I heard one.

  “I think in the deep ocean, even your best friend starts to look like lunch. And when you’re a shark, you don’t have any friends.” Ben spread his hands and gestured at the empty b
ar. “You’re in deep water now, kid.”

  I was feeling seasick, so he must have had a point. “So what should I do?”

  “You want a job?”

  “You mean working here?”

  “No moron, I mean a real job.”

  “Like a taxpayer?”

  “Exactly. You want to be a citizen?”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “I’m an outlaw.”

  “An outlaw.” Ben snorted derisively. “Robin Hood was an outlaw, you’re just a tapeworm until you decide to do something with your life.” He sighed. “You any good at what you do?”

  “Very.”

  Ben smiled. “You don’t have a confidence problem, do you?”

  “That’s how you raised me.”

  Ben nodded. “Well, then, there’s really only one question, isn’t there?”

  I waited.

  “You want to keep swimming in the deep, dark ocean, or do you want to fish?”

  ***

  It took me two weeks.

  Their guys were good. I traced the original Facebook post to an IP address in Kazakhstan, but that was only a misdirect from a server in Estonia. I crawled through a rabbit hole across three continents before ending up in the Bahamas, trapped on the wrong side of a firewall. Not impassable or impenetrable, but it would slow me down.

  But then I remembered the car trunk and got lucky. The thug who took the photo didn’t realize every image captured by a phone is encoded with metadata that contains your exact location, your digital profile, and everything else a hacker could ever want.

  Find one shark and you’re bound to find more. All it takes is a little blood in the water.

  By the end of the first week I knew who they were, when they went online, and where they were accessing Wi-Fi in the real world.

  The trick was getting them to take the bait.

  Gangsters are just gangs with a suffix. Territorial by nature, paranoid by profession. All I had to do was plant a seed of doubt.

  Three afternoons at the train station with a scanner of my own cut into the Azerbaijani haul just enough to raise a few bushy eyebrows. Then a well-timed e-mail sent from a hacked account made it appear as if one of them was moonlighting for the Russians.

  A morning at the gas station to fill up my tank gave me plenty of opportunity to jam the skimmers the Russians had installed on all the pumps. I made sure my digital signature was faint but still visible enough to trace, then made sure the trail led straight back to their rivals.

  The first body was found in a Dumpster behind the gas station. The local news avoided the grisly details, but apparently the dead man had been soaked in gasoline and set ablaze before his demise. The Russians weren’t subtle, but they were thorough.

  In a freak accident, the suspected Azerbaijani turncoat allegedly fell down a flight of stairs in his apartment building, landing on an ice pick that someone had carelessly left on the floor. The ice pick had miraculously been balancing on its handle, so the sharp end pierced his left eye, entering his brain and killing him instantly.

  A few days later, a guy my uncle knew from the old neighborhood met with an unfortunate end, though my uncle only smiled when he heard the news. The gentleman in question was best known for breaking the fingers of bartenders who forgot to pay the insurance that covered them in case anyone broke their fingers. He died of a sudden heart attack, because someone attacked his heart with a shotgun.

  I was left alone. Nobody sent me another message on TOR or anywhere else on the Darknet, and my alternate identities were clean. There was so much chum in the water, I think the sharks were too busy eating each other to notice a little fish like me.

  ***

  Two months to the day after finding the body in the river, I was sitting at the bar watching ice melt into whisky when a cop came in and grabbed the stool next to mine.

  The detective’s name was Sam and he’d just gone off duty, wanted to grab a beer before heading home. We got to talking, as two guys in a half-empty bar will. When I asked him about work, he ordered a second beer and talked some more.

  “Work was out of control a few weeks back,” he said. “Haven’t seen anything like that since the nineties.”

  I watched my ice melt and just listened.

  “You might’ve seen some of it in the papers,” he added. “But that’s only a fraction of what went down.” He had another sip of beer. “Dead bodies scattered all over the city.”

  I held my glass more tightly but didn’t say a word.

  “I’m just glad it’s settled down,” he said.

  “Settled down?”

  He nodded and drained the bottle. “Thirty percent drop in felonies.”

  “Thirty percent?”

  “Just plummeted after a steady climb for years. Fewer criminals, fewer crimes I guess. Drug arrests, assaults, even car thefts. Never seen anything like it. The chief says we should take the summer off.”

  My uncle stepped up to the bar and cleared the empty glasses. “Thirty percent,” he said, looking not at the cop but straight through me. “That’s quite a return on investment.”

  I reached for my wallet. “Let me get this,” I said, a little too hastily.

  “That’s okay,” said the cop, reaching for his. He pulled out a credit card and laid it on the bar.

  “Sorry,” said my uncle. “I don’t take credit cards.”

  I pulled two twenties from my wallet and placed them on the bar.

  “Thanks,” said the cop, smiling. “I’ll get you next time.”

  ***

  My uncle says maybe Robin Hood isn’t such a bad role model, after all. He thinks I should change sides and apply for a job with the FBI, but he understands why I’m reluctant to put my work experience on my resume. To be honest, I still don’t know what I want to do with my life.

  But if anyone asks, just tell them I’ve gone fishing.

  The Bomb Booth

  Charlotte Hinger

  Thrilled was an understatement. My first trip to the inner sanctum. My first book with Poisoned Pen Press. An interview scheduled with the fabled Barbara Peters at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore. I checked out the store and the location the night before. All I had to do was walk across the street.

  Makeup looked decent. Outfit to die for. Nerves sort of under control. I arrived an hour early. It was hot out. Really, really hot. Like 109. I pulled up to the curb, parked, and started off. I walked, and I walked, and I walked. The store had disappeared.

  I walked eight blocks before I asked for directions, then walked eight blocks back. Sweat-soaked and miserable I entered the store barely in time, gratefully fell into Barbara’s arms and once again pondered ways to compensate for my total lack of a sense of direction.

  —C.H.

  ***

  He was a cute little devil. A cross between Howdy Doody and the puling little brat who sniveled over Lassie. Dwayne Hitchcock, the community leader, coldly eyed the little red-headed bastard as August Winter wound up his project talk at the monthly meeting of the Seekers Not Slackers 4-H club.

  “And this concludes my talk, ‘Build a Better Bomb Shelter.’ Are there any questions?”

  Dwayne had some, but he kept his mouth shut. Why in the hell would a country that had just finished a World War fabricate a Cold War? How many countries would America piss off before she was happy? Now even the kids were all riled up.

  Augie’s mother, Sharon, beamed, turned to Dwayne, and squeezed his elbow. Her eyes glowed with pride. Because he was the community leader, naturally he was always careful to applaud any member’s effort. In Augie’s case, however, he made it a point to show overwhelmed admiration for whatever the boy did. Dwayne smiled at Sharon and gave a slight shake of his head as though he could scarcely contain his wonderment at the lad’s abilities.

  “I mustn’t show too much favoritism,�
� he whispered to Sharon. She barely heard his words. Barely took her eyes off her son’s face.

  A fellow club member, Kenny Tillhook, rose to his feet and waited for Augie to recognize him. He was Augie’s best friend and although the question sounded spontaneous, Dwayne suspected the boys had concocted it in advance.

  “Wouldn’t a bomb booth be a great idea for our fair booth this year? Bomb-shelter booth, I mean,” he said after the laughter died down.

  Augie seemed taken aback. The dusting of freckles glowed on his face and even his cowlick seemed to stand up a little straighter. But Dwayne saw straight into his devious heart. Looked right through to his double-dealing soul.

  “Kenny asks would building a better bomb shelter make a good fair booth?”

  Of course Augie clearly repeated Kenny’s question in accordance with proper club etiquette. Dwayne thought he would go out of his frigging mind by the time his reign was up in this miserable son-of-a-bitching club.

  Sharon’s hand strayed to his thigh and she gripped it tensely as though Augie’s answer were equivalent to passing a major bill in Congress.

  “Yes, I think it can be worked out. Are there any more questions?” There were none. “If not, that concludes my presentation.” There was a round of applause.

  Kenny stood and waited to be recognized. “I make a motion that ‘Building a Better Bomb Shelter’ be our booth this year.”

  Becky Straugh, the president, corrected him immediately. “It’s ‘I move’ Kenny, not ‘I make a motion.’” She quivered with righteousness as she restated the motion. “Is there any discussion?”

  Ted Barrett glanced at this twin brother and leapt to his feet. “Too many of us have livestock projects. We won’t have the time.”

  There was an immediate spirited exchange, done formally, of course, with little Becky wielding her hammer vigorously when the members ignored protocol. She called for a vote. It was a done deal. Becky appointed a committee consisting of members who were not taking livestock projects. Augie and Kenny were on it, of course, and also Abigail Barrow, a mean-spirited girl who could point out the flaws in anyone. Abigail would see to it that the boys stayed on task.