“Whatever you’re going to tell me,” Radley Dubose says, “don’t tell me anything if those little shits disabled the car’s cameras and faded away like a couple ghosts. I’ve had enough of their smart-aleck crap, the insolent little shits. I’d like to shove each one’s head up the other one’s ass and roll them down the street like a hoop.”
“Maybe you’ll get a chance to do it,” Jergen says. “They went west on foot, toward the boulevard.”
They get into the mud-spattered Range Rover. Carter Jergen switches on the headlights, drives out of the parking lot, turns west on the street.
“I mean,” Dubose says, “they’re two freaking writers, of all things. Writers. You and I, we’re hard-case pros. We break heads, get the job done. Why do a couple bookworm geeks think they’re smart enough to keep pissing on us and getting away with it?”
“Maybe because they can,” Jergen suggests.
“Not anymore. Damn if they will. I’ve had enough. Let’s make this happen.”
Jergen pulls to the curb and parks illegally just short of the intersection with the boulevard.
They get out of the Rover and stand on the corner, scoping out the situation. The restaurants and bars are open, but the stores in the strip centers and the stand-alones are closed. Traffic races past and brakes and races again, spasming between signal lights at the intersections, fewer vehicles than would have been here an hour earlier, more than will be here an hour from now.
The first thing that intrigues Dubose is a motor inn to the south and a cheapjack motel to the north. “We already got word that sonofabitch Sanjay used his ATM card. He wants to pay cash at a motel rather than use a credit card.”
The first thing that intrigues Jergen is the traffic cameras mounted high on a streetlamp, one aimed south, one north. “Maybe they didn’t get a room. Maybe they hitched a ride or went somewhere else. Before we start playing gumshoe, squeezing motel desk clerks, let’s have a look at the traffic-cam video.”
24
Turning on lights ahead of her and switching them off behind, Jane toured the house, feeling oppressed by a surfeit of deeply carved moldings and decorative paneling and crystal chandeliers; exotic silk draperies with swagged valances and tasseled hems; French furniture featuring intricate inlaid patterns and scenes; gilded this and silver-leafed that. Where the floors weren’t limestone, they were wide-plank walnut. The many antique Persian carpets—Tabriz, Mahal, Sultanabad—were exquisite. Some lamps appeared to be by Tiffany, others by Handel.
In mad contrast to the overdone but harmonious décor, the riotous abstract paintings might have been by famous artists. Jane didn’t know for sure. Like most modern art, they interested her no more than did the wind-tangled rain-compacted sun-bleached trash that time accumulated in vomitous-looking masses along California’s cracked and potholed highways, as the once-golden state stewed in government corruption on its way to bankruptcy.
The house had been built by Sara Holdsteck, but Jane suspected that the feverish décor was all Simon Yegg, comprising treasures accumulated from his for-profit marriages.
She found what she needed in a subterranean level too grand to be called a basement. The garage, which could accommodate eight cars, currently housed a Rolls-Royce, a Mercedes GL 550, a Cadillac Escalade, and a Lamborghini. There were cabinets of tools and a workbench and one of those wheeled boards on which a mechanic could lie to roll under a car, and a hydraulic vehicle lift, suggesting that Simon not only collected cars but enjoyed working on them. The rest of that level was given to a large wine cellar with a spacious tasting room and a home theater that seated fifteen.
The ornate theater came with an authentic French fa?ade, a receiving area with box office, a lobby with candy counter, and the main screening room, which itself measured about thirty-five by fifty feet. Underground as it was, windowless as it was, thoroughly soundproofed to prevent the loudest movie music and sound effects from disturbing people elsewhere in the house, the theater provided the ideal—if inappropriately glamorous—venue for a prolonged and vigorous interrogation.
25
Parked at the corner, the Range Rover is in the spillover zone of the Wi-Fi service established for a nearby office building.
While Radley Dubose stands out on the corner, scowling north and then south and then north again along the boulevard, as though everyone and everything in sight profoundly offends him, Carter Jergen sits in the driver’s seat with his laptop. He accesses the National Security Agency’s all but infinite virtual storerooms of data at their million-square-foot Utah facility.
Although he is an employee of the NSA with the highest security clearance, Jergen is not at the moment working for the agency or for the existing government of the country. He is serving the secret confederacy that intends to remake the nation into a utopia, and he dares not risk alerting his NSA superiors as to what information he is seeking or for what purpose. Consequently, he enters by a back door established by certain of his colleagues.
In addition to snatching every phone call and text message from the ether and storing them for possible future review, the agency also, among other tasks, coordinates traffic and venue cameras from law-enforcement jurisdictions nationwide. Once having accessed this program, it is possible to select any location within the borders of the United States and obtain a real-time view of events there.
In this case, Jergen does not want to see the current action captured by the cameras mounted atop streetlamps at the intersection directly in front of him. Instead, he seeks the archived video that will show what happened there a few minutes after the Shukla twins abandoned the patrol car.
In recent years, traffic cameras have become ubiquitous. Many reasons are put forth to explain the need for them. To study vehicle flow and design more efficient intersections. To discourage drivers from running red lights when a video record is being made to provide evidence of the violation. To preserve the security of the citizens in a time of terrorism. Yada, yada, yada.
There is some truth in all the reasons that are given. But from Jergen’s perspective, the best use of this ocean of archived video is to find people who don’t want to be found, in order to do to them what they don’t want done.
And here—ta-da!—are the Shukla twins on the laptop screen, standing on the northeast corner of the intersection in time past, exactly where Radley Dubose stands in time present. The dangerous young authors regard the street with confusion and indecision and fear, rather than with Dubose’s smoldering rage.
26
Considering its metal shelves packed full of everything from cleaning supplies to bibles, its wooden creche containing a swaddled baby Jesus with a bent halo wired to his head, its plastic livestock with unlikely expressions of adoration, and its life-size figures staring with realistic glass eyes, the windowless storage room was a strange place in ordinary times and downright eerie at the moment.
When the last voices faded, when no more doors were slammed, after no further car engines rumbled to life in the parking lot, when silence endured for two minutes, three, Sanjay and Tanuja rose from their concealment behind the camels and passed among the wise men.
Sanjay eased open the door and saw a pitch-black hallway brightened only by the light that spilled past him and imprinted his shadow on the floor, a swollen and distorted silhouette, as if it might not be just a shadow, but instead the image of some entity that possessed him, here revealed. He leaned out and looked toward the junction of corridors. The darkness and silence were complete.
“I think we’re alone.”
Tanuja said, “Did you notice a rectory next to the church?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“If there is, we don’t dare turn on lights near any windows. The minister or someone might see.”
In case of an earthquake, there was an emergency flashlight plugged into a wall outlet by the door, perpetually charging. They were most likely distributed throughout the building.
“It’s too bright,” Tanuja judged.