Mortal Fear (2 page)

Life is simple.

The more complicated you believe yours is, the less you know of your true condition.

For a long time I did not understand this.

Now I do.

You are hungry or you are full. You are healthy or you are sick. You are faithful to your wife or you are not. You are alive or you are dead.

I am alive.

We complain about complexity, about moral shades of gray, but we take refuge in these things. Complexity offers refuge from choice, and thus from action. In most situations, most of us would prefer to do nothing.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Something is wrong.

I stare at the phone number of the New Orleans police department, which I have just taken down from directory assistance.

I have known something is wrong for some time, at some level, but it took what happened today to make me face it squarely. To override the opposition.

I have information about the Karin Wheat murder, I say when the call goes through.

Ill connect you to Homicide, says a female voice.

I glance up from my desk to the small color television I keep tuned to CNN sixteen hours a day. Theyre into the International Hour. It was CNN that brought me news of the murder.

Detective Mozingo, says a male voice.

I have information relevant to the Karin Wheat case.

Whats your name?

Harper Cole.

Address?

Im calling from Rain, Mississippi.

A pause. Where?

Its a farming area in the Delta.

How do you know anything about the Wheat case? The body was just discovered six hours ago.

I saw it on CNN. They cut into a regular newscast to show Wheats estate. I guess she was more famous than I thought.

I hear the detective sigh and mutter something that sounds like
... freakin high profile...
away from the phone.

Are you working on that case? I ask him.

No, thank God. Mayeuxs got it. But Ill take the information. What do you think you know?

I think I know how she was killed.

We know how she was killed, sir.

Nowadays I dont trust anyone who calls me sir. Im sorry. I mean how the killer got to her. How he
chose
her.

Another silence. A suspicious one.

Its sort of complicated, I tell him. I work as a sysopIm sorry, a system operatorfor an on-line computer service. Are you familiar with what that is?

Not really, the detective says warily.

Youve heard of America On-line? CompuServe?

Yeah. The Internet, right?

Close enough. The on-line service I work for is called EROS. It deals exclusively with sex.

You mean like phone sex?

Jesus
. Maybe I should wait and talk to DetectiveMayeux, was it?

Yeah. Hes still at the scene, though. Just give me what youve got and....

Mozingo is still talking, but I am no longer listening. I am staring astonished into the face of a man that the CNN caption line identifies as NOPD detective Michael Mayeux. His shirt drenched with sweat, he stands beside the tall black wrought-iron gate of the mansion that
belonged to Karin Wheat. I recognize it from the earlier broadcast. The sidewalk before the gate is cordoned off with bright yellow police tapes, but against the tapes stand at least a hundred people ranging in age from fifteen to fifty. More women than men.

Fans.

Detective Mayeux looks irritably at a black female reporter and says, I cant comment on that at this time. He is a tanned man of medium height, in his early forties, maybe ten pounds overweight. The reporter thrusts the mike into his face.

What about the reports that Ms. Wheats body was sexually mutilated?

Mayeux looks pained. I can categorically deny that, Charvel, he says, seeming to brighten as disappointment flickers in her eyes.

Are you
there
? barks a voice in my ear.

Im here, I murmur, watching Mayeux motion for a patrolwoman to keep the crowd back. Im watching the guy right now.

What guy?

Your guy. Mayeux. Theyre showing him live on CNN. Right this second.

Christ, he gets all the face time.

Listen, I say, deciding I like Mayeuxs look better than Mozingos voice. Does Detective Mayeux have voice mail?

The detective covers the phone with his palm and then shouts something. Ill transfer you.

A digital female voice tells me I can leave a message as long as ten minutes.

My name is Harper Cole, I say slowly. Im calling from Mississippi. Then I stop. I cant just leave my name and number. With a murder like this one on his hands, Mayeux might not get around to calling me for days. I say my phone number twice, then pause and gather my thoughts.

Im calling because I think this murderthe Karin Wheat murdermay be connected to some other... not murders, but... possible murders, I guess. I work as a system operator for an on-line computer servicea
national servicecalled EROS. Over the past few months Ive noticed that some women have left the network abruptly for unexplained reasons. They could have simply terminated service, but I dont think they did. The company wouldnt want me to call you like this, but I felt I had to. Its too complicated to explain to a machine, but Im afraid something may have happened to those other women as well. Something like what happened to Karin Wheat. I think maybe the same person could be involved. You see, Karin Wheat was a client of EROS. Thats confidential information, by the way. You wont understand until you talk to me. Id appreciate a call as soon as possible. Im always home. I work from here, and I stay up pretty late. Thanks.

On TV, Mayeux has disappeared from the wrought-iron gate. The crowd is larger than before. The camera pans across several male faces painted with eye shadow and eyeliner. Disciples of Karin Wheats esoteric prose. A black-and-white photo of the author appears, filling one-fourth of the screen. Its the publicity shot from her latest book. I recognize it because I have that novel
Isis
on one of my bookshelves. I bought it after I began having on-line conversations with Karin. Very interesting conversations.

Karin Wheat was a twisted lady.

I get up from the desk and go to my minifridge for an ice-cold Tab. I use them to break the monotony of diet Coke. Not only do they pack a more powerful fizz rush, but I actually like the stuff. Ive drunk half the can by the time I sit down at my Gateway 2000.

Price quotes from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange scroll slowly down the screen. This is my real job. Trading futures. Bonds, indexes, even agriculturals. I do it from my house with only my own money. Keeps it simple. No suicidal clients to deal with. Im holding a ten lot of S&P contracts right now, but nothings in crisis mode.

I swig some more Tab and glance across at the post-modern black table that supports the EROS computer and satellite video link. Its late afternoon, and on-line traffic is light. Mostly housewives right now. Bodice-ripper stuff. The real freaks are on their way home from work.

My wife should be as well. Today shes working in Jackson, the state capital, eighty minutes away from our farmhouse in the flat Delta cotton fields. Drewe is a doctor, three blessed years out of her residency, and the same age I amthirty-three. Im thinking I should start cooking us some supper when the phone rings.

Hello?

This is Detective Michael Mayeux, NOPD.

His voice has the radio tinniness that cell phones arent supposed to have but usually do. Thanks for calling back so fast.

Just checked my voice mail, he explains. Ive got twenty-eight nutcase calls already. Vampires killed her. Mummies. One guy claims hes an incubus and that he killed her.

So why did you call me?

You sounded slightly less nutty than the rest. You said you were calling from Mississippi?

Thats right. EROSthe company I sysop foris based in New York City, but I do my job from right here.

Im listening, Mr. Cole.

You know what on-line services are?

Sure. AOL, CompuServe, Delphi. But your message didnt give me the feeling were talking about people using MUDs or booking vacations by modem.

No, youre right, I tell him, relieved to have found someone who doesnt need spoon-feeding.

So whats this EROS? Live chat, e-mail, role-playing, all that stuff?

Exactly.

My kids a computer fiend. I log onto CompuServe every now and then. Im no expert, though. Keep it at the idiot level.

Thats my natural level, Detective. I told your machine that Karin Wheat was a member of EROS.

And you said it was confidential information.

It is. I mean, according to the rules of the membership agreement. Legally, were forbidden to give out any clients true identity. There are a lot of married people on-line with us who dont want their spouses to know. Quite a few celebrities, too.

But you gave me Wheats name.

I wanted you to know how serious I am.

Hang oncut over to Chartres, Harry. Im back, Mr. Cole. You said you thought Wheats death might be connected to some other women? Disappearances or something?

Right. What Id like to dofor now, at leastis give you the names of those women and see if you can check them out. On the sly, sort of. You can do that, right?

Mayeux doesnt answer for a moment. You mean check and see if theyre alive?

Right.

Yeah, we can do that. But why havent
you
done that, if youre so concerned? You have their phone numbers, dont you?

Yes. And I thought about doing it. But frankly... I was told not to.

By who?

Someone in the company. Look, can you just take the names? Maybe Im nuts, but Id feel better, okay?

Shoot.

I read the names and numbers from a notepad. Mayeux repeats them as I give them; I assume he is speaking into a pocket recorder. Thats five different states, he notes. Six women, five states. Spread across the country.

Information Superhighway, I remind him.

No shit. Well, Ill get back to you if anything comes of this. Gotta go, Mr. Cole. Time to talk to the fairies and the vampires.

The conversation leaves me strangely excited.

After weeks of suspicion, I have finally
done
something. I am tempted to call Miles in Manhattan and tell him exactly what Ive done, but I dont. If Miles Turner turns out to be rightif all those women have slipped contentedly back into the roles of happy housewives or fulfilled career womenthen I dont want to give him the satisfaction. But if I turn out to be rightif those women are less than healthy right now....

Im not sure I want Miles to know I know that.

This realization shocks me a little. I have known Miles
Turner for more than twenty years. Since grade school. He was eccentric then. And during the last fifteen yearssince he left Mississippi for MIT in 1978I have seen very little of him. It was Miles who got me working for EROS in the first place. But I cant blame him.

I was a willing Faust.

Hearing the solid door-chunk of Drewes Acura outside, I hunch low over the keyboard of the Gateway, assuming the posture that announces to my wife that I have been manically trading commodities contracts for the last eight hours.

Who were you talking to on the phone? she calls from the hallway.

Busted. During her commute, she must have tried me on her cellular. She often does, as the sight of summer cotton fields lazing by the car windows gets monotonous after the first ten seconds or so.

Drewe leans into my office, pointedly refusingas she has done for the last few weeksto enter the domain of the EROS computer. My wife, like many wives, is jealous of my time. But there is more to this conflict than a wife and a computer. EROS is not merely a computer but the nexus of a network of five thousand people (half of them women) who spend quite a bit of their waking hours thinking about sex.

I picked up some chicken breasts, Drewe says, arching her eyebrows like a comic French chef.

Great, I say. Give me a minute and Ill get them going.

Its not that Drewe doesnt think about sex. She does. And its not that she doesnt enjoy sex. She does that too. Its just that lately she has begun thinking about sex in a whole new way. As a means to an end. By that I mean its natural end.

Children.

She smiles. Childless at thirty-three, Drewe still possesses the tightness of skin and muscle of a woman in her twenties. Her breasts are still high, her face free of wrinkles save laugh lines. I love this about her. I know how selfish it is, wanting to preserve her physical youth. But part of me wants that. Her hair is auburn, her skin
fair, her eyes green. Her beauty is not that of a fashion model (her younger sister, Erin, was the model) nor the pampered, aerobicized, overly made-up elegance of a young Junior Leaguer. Drewes distinctive allure emanates from her eyes. Not only the eyes themselves, which are deep set and clear, but from her brows, which are finely curved yet strong, like the ribs of a ship. What emanates from her eyes is pure intelligence. Cool, quantitative, uncommon
sense
.