? ? ?
LETTY WAS OUT SOMEWHERE, and the housekeeper had taken Sam to Whole Foods, and the baby was asleep, and Weather said that her back had been feeling grimy, probably from the hot weather. Lucas took her up to the shower and washed her back, thoroughly enough that she wouldn’t really need another back-washing for some time. Lucas was getting himself back together when Shrake called.
“I talked to your guy Wilfred. He said some college dropouts were making a supercomputer in a barn somewhere, but he doesn’t know what for. But: they’re paying fifty bucks for any computer, in any shape, as long as it has a certain kind of processor. I don’t know shit about computers, but have you ever heard of something called Sandy Bridge? Or Ivy Bridge?”
“That rings a bell,” Lucas said. “I think it might be some kind of Intel chip.”
“Okay. Anyway, they’re paying fifty bucks, cash money. As I understand it, those chips cost a few hundred bucks each. The cash-money aspect means that every asshole with legs is over at the university stealing computers. They met at a park-and-ride lot last week down in Denmark Township, and the story is, people had a thousand computers. Not all of them had the right chip, but most of them did. These guys paid out a shitload of money and left in a white Ford F-150 with no plates.”
“When you say a thousand, is that a guess that means ‘a lot’? Or does that mean a thousand?”
“I asked that. Wilfred actually thought it might have been more than a thousand. The buyers had a laptop with a list of every computer in the world on it, and you’d step up with your computer, and they’d tell you yes or no, and if it was yes, they’d peel a fifty off a roll and throw the computer in the back of the truck. When he said throw, that’s what he meant. He said they’d just toss it in the back, didn’t care what happened to the video screens.”
“Will there be another meeting?”
“I’m told there will be . . . but it might not be around here. The rumor is, these guys are from Iowa and they’ve been buying all over the Midwest. Wilfred will keep an eye out. Supposedly, these guys need sixteen thousand, three hundred and eighty-four processors. That’s the number Wilfred gave me, and he claims it’s exact.”
“Ah, Jesus.”
“Oh. He said the buyers had guns.”
“Ah, Jesus.”
? ? ?
LETTY WAS BACK AT DINNERTIME. Lucas told her what he’d found out about Pilate, and she asked, “What do you think now?”
“Skye has me interested. There is no doubt that hundreds of people are murdered every year, and their bodies are never found,” Lucas said. “I could even tell you where a lot of them are: if you took a search team out in the desert south of Las Vegas, and searched for a mile on both sides of the highway down to San Bernardino, you’d turn up a hundred bodies without looking too hard. The most likely victims are like Skye, because nobody ever really knows where they’re at, or where they might have gone to. If you had a serious, insane predator out there, a crazy guy, travelers are natural targets. If this guy Pilate is really like she says he is, he could be dangerous.”
Letty said, “Good. You’re interested. That’s all I wanted.”
Weather said, “Letty, I’m begging you. Don’t hang out with Skye. Let her do her own thing. You’d stick out like a sore thumb, and the word would get around that you’re affluent, and you could get in pretty deep trouble—even without Pilate.”
“I’d be okay if I had a carry permit . . .” Lucas opened his mouth, maybe to scream, but she grinned and said, “Just messing with you, Dad.”
? ? ?
AFTER DINNER, Letty called the Holiday Inn, Skye’s room, but she wasn’t in. She was in at eight o’clock, and said she’d had no luck talking to other travelers in St. Paul. Letty asked about the Jesus tattoo on Pilate’s shoulder and Skye said that she knew Pilate had some ink, but not the specifics. Otherwise, the description of the man in Quartzsite fit the man she knew.
When Lucas told Skye that the guy’s name was Pilate, not Pilot, she said, “I don’t think that’s right, Mr. Davenport. He didn’t tell people his name was Pilate, he said, ‘The Pilot,’ like a title, not like a name.”
“All right. I’ll keep looking under both names. You keep asking around,” Lucas said. “We’ll either find him, or Henry. Okay?”
“I hope,” she said, but Lucas heard the doubt in her voice.
For a father and daughter who had no blood relationship, Lucas and Letty not only looked alike—dark hair, blue eyes, athletic—but behaved alike, especially when it came to sleep. Both could stay up all night, neither liked to get up early. At ten-thirty, Lucas was up and had picked out a suit, was wearing the slacks and a T-shirt and was considering the dress shirt possibilities, when Letty knocked on the door to the bedroom suite.
“Yeah, come on in,” Lucas called from the dressing room.
Letty came in holding her phone. “I didn’t hear the phone go off, but Skye left a message. She said that early this morning she went out to Swede Hollow and met a guy who said that Henry is up in Duluth, with some other travelers,” Letty said. “She said she was going to catch a bus and go there. I called back to the hotel, but they said she’d checked out. I called the bus station, and they said a bus to Duluth left a half hour ago. She doesn’t have a cell phone.”
“Do not go to Duluth,” Lucas said.
“I’m not going to. I don’t expect you to, either, but it was . . . I don’t know. An anticlimax. I thought we might be getting somewhere yesterday, and now she’s gone.”
“She’s a traveler,” Lucas said. “I suspect she’ll be back in touch.” He slipped a shirt off a hanger, held it next to the suit jacket he’d be wearing, said, “Good,” and put it on and started buttoning it up.