The disguise was simple but effective. A brown wig and mustache. Eyeglasses with a tortoiseshell frame. Tinted contact lenses turned his blue eyes brown. A bulky winter coat with padding underneath made him look a good thirty pounds heavier, well over his normal one-eighty-five. The leather gloves were completely inconspicuous. By 11:00 P. M. the temperature had dropped below freezing, and a cold wind was blowing off the Sound. Only a fool wouldn't bundle up.
The Quicksilver Copy Center was open twenty-four hours a day. It was located next to a pizza place in a strip mall. Any time of day you could find half a dozen bleary-eyed souls standing at the Xerox machines, and tonight was no exception. As an all-purpose business center it also offered everything from mail boxes and conference rooms to fax machines and computers by-the-hour. It was the computers that interested him--specifically, anonymous Internet access that could never be traced back to him.
The bell on the door tinkled as he entered, but no one looked up. He approached the counter and stopped. The clerk, a college-aged woman, was on the telephone. He made no faces, showed no sign of impatience. He simply waited. He would do nothing to make his visit memorable to her or anyone else.
Finally, the clerk said good night to her boyfriend and hung up the phone.
"Can I help you, sir?"
"I need a computer." He offered a twenty-dollar bill, his gloves still on.
She took the money, made change from the register. "Pod number three is open. Thank you for using Quicksilver."
He scooped the change from the countertop and walked away. Each computer was separated by shoulder-high office dividers, one customer per cubicle. That was all the privacy he needed.
He sat at the terminal and removed his leather gloves. As an animal skin, leather could leave behind distinctive patterns not unlike fingerprints. He wore flesh-tone rubber gloves beneath the leather, no prints of any kind. His fingers danced across the keyboard as he logged onto the Internet.
He went to the mail center, from which he could send e-mail. He typed in the address, which he had memorized. He did not identify the sender; it would read only "Quicksilver Copy Center." There was space to type a message, but that too he left blank.
He pulled a diskette from his coat pocket and loaded into the b: drive. He uploaded it to the computer and attached it as a file to his blank message. The file contained everything he needed to communicate. It had no words on it. Only pictures. Pictures he had taken.
A picture was worth a thousand screams.
He smirked to himself as he hit the SEND button, firing off his bloody missive.
Chapter Seven.
Gus was home by ten o'clock. He paid the baby-sitter, sent her off in a taxi, and checked on Morgan. She was asleep in her room, which was a relief. He wasn't prepared to answer any more questions about Mommy.
He hadn't slept much in the last two days, but he wasn't sleepy. He went to the kitchen to fix a sandwich. Sliced ham and baby Swiss were in the refrigerator. He rolled it like a hotdog and stuffed it into a baguette, slathering on some Dijon mustard. Almost as an afterthought, he glanced at the label on the package, just to see where Beth had bought it. Boar's Head was all it said. Could have come from anywhere. He still didn't know where she shopped.
He pulled up a stool and sat at the counter, alone with his thoughts. Detective Kessler had definitely ticked him off, but maybe he was right. Beth's disappearance didn't automatically add up to foul play. Ego had him jumping to conclusions. It was perversely self-centered, but what man didn't think his wife was more likely to be abducted than to find a worthy replacement? Perhaps he had put too much stock into the fact that she'd left without her car, her clothes, even her purse and credit cards. For all he knew, she'd been stockpiling cash for months. She could have bought a whole new wardrobe, rented a red convertible, and driven to Acapulco. Adios, Gus.
The question was, would she come back? Of course she would. She was just making him squirm. This was payback time for all those times he had left her alone with absolutely no idea when he'd be back. Funny, but he could map the decline of his marriage through all those business trips. As a first-year associate he used to schedule his meetings on a Friday or a Monday so Beth could fly out with him, and they'd spend the weekend in places like Malibu or Monterey. That stopped when Beth tired of hopping on airplanes just to watch her husband work by the swimming pool. Then he started traveling alone, but he would call home every night before bed. That was nice for a while, but it too faded. The more senior he got, the more business he crammed into each trip. Client dinners could last hours. It got to the point that he'd go away for days and be lucky to squeeze in a call from the airport to let her know he was on his way home. Even that became unworkable. Somewhere along the way he just gave up and left it to his secretary to leave a message telling her where he was. He was comfortable with that. It was his-secretary, after all, who had picked out the gifts for birthdays and anniversaries, who sent Beth flowers whenever he had to cancel their plans. Beth got a lot of flowers.
A noise from down the hall caught his attention. He was suddenly alert, listening. He heard it again, more clearly this time.