The Next President (8 page)

When the bystander eventually happened to notice he had something in his pocket, he’d take it out and leave his fingerprints on it.

J. D. reloaded to fire another round at the newspaper photo. The typical minigun was a shoddy piece of work that was fired once from a range of not more than ten feet and then thrown away. But Walter Perry’s handiwork was reliable at twice that range and reusable. He fired the second round and it tore the photo of Del Rawley in two.

J. D. went into the house and found a blank sheet of writing paper. He drew a rough oval approximately the size of an adult head. He sketched in eyes, brows, and a nose. As art, it was as primitive as the stick figures he’d received Which was exactly the point.

He took the drawing to the garage, removed the torn picture of Rawley from the planter, and taped up his drawing in its place. He moved the ladders closer together, leaving only a six-inch opening between them for the drawing. He stepped back as far as he could go, maybe twenty-five feet.

J. D. Cade didn’t know who was blackmailing him, who was threatening his son, or what the man looked like. At the moment, though, the crude portrait was sufficient to focus his anger.

He fired the pen gun, and the round struck its target squarely between the eyes.

Across the country in Virginia, in the last light of the day, a man with many names, most of them unpleasant and bestowed on him by his multitude of enemies, cut back a jasmine plant that had gotten leggy. A native of the tropics the plant would have to be brought indoors before the first frost. But placed in a bright window, it would blossom again in January, its white star shaped flowers and glorious fragrance delights to the senses.

The name by which the man thought of himself was the Gardener.

An altogether different type of character approached him. Of medium height and blocky build, he had a receding hairline, protuberant eyes, and two large warts, one at either end of a wide, lipless mouth. His name was Harold Starchley, but to everyone who’d ever worked with him he was Harold the Toad.

The Gardener, of course, knew that toads could be useful. They devoured slugs and other pests.

“I talked to the technician, sir. He said Cade must have cloned the PCR we sent him and installed a switch to deactivate the homing function. That’s the only explanation for why it works perfectly some of the time and not at all other times.”

“Mr. Cade doesn’t like us intruding on his privacy.”

“If he’s cloned the PCR, sir, it means he’s taking countermeasures. He’s probably looking for us right now.”

“Of course he is. Which is why we haven’t let him see us.”

“But time is passing, sir, and Rawleys numbers are still up.”

“You have a point, Harold. Perhaps Mr. Cade needs a bit more prompting He returned his attention to snipping the jasmine.

“Well, we do have our options, don’t we?”

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

That morning’s Los Angeles Times held news of interest for J. D. Denver—The FBI may have prevented a second assassination attempt against presidential candidate Senator Franklin Delano Rawley. An anonymous source has revealed that another sniper shot at Senator Rawley may have been planned for when the candidate speaks in this city later today. The two speeches the senator will be giving here are at indoor venues, leading authorities to conclude that the attempt would be made as Senator Rawley entered or left one of the buildings.

Neither the FBI nor the Rawley campaign would comment publicly on the matter, but it has been confirmed that the Rawley entourage has moved from the Four Seasons Hotel, where it had been staying. New lodgings for the campaign have not been revealed.

This potential new threat comes scarcely more than a week after…

J. D. pored over the rest of the story and strained to read between the lines.

After what had happened in Chicago, the Secret Service and the FBI had to be going balls out to see that nobody got off another long-range shot at the candidate… but were they anxious enough to imagine a threat that wasn’t real? J. D. had never been to Denver, not for the purpose of killing Del Rawley.

For the moment, all he could think was that the feds were following a

false lead, something that would carry them away from him. He was hesitant to accept that notion completely, but earlier that morning he’d used his laptop to read newspapers from around the country. He thought other papers might have stories about the search for him that the Times hadn’t printed. But he couldn’t find any report that pointed toward him. Either the feds were staying extremely tight-lipped about the investigation or they honestly didn’t have a clue as to who had pulled the trigger in Chicago.

All things considered, J. D. was beginning to think he’d gotten away clean.

From Chicago, anyway.

That thought had no sooner occurred to him than he heard a door open.

By reflex, he grabbed the sugar bowl off the kitchen table and got ready to hurl it at whoever appeared. But reason soon overtook fear and he set the would-be missile down. There was only one person who would likely be entering the Refuge now… and it wouldn’t do to let him see just how tense he was.

Pickpocket stepped into the kitchen.

The little thief’s eyes were bloodshot and had dark circles under them. For the first time J. D. noticed a hint of stubble on the young hacker’s chin. But he didn’t smell of alcohol, tobacco, or sex. And the smile of satisfaction on the little thief’s face looked hard-earned. He dropped into a chair opposite

J. D.

But Pickpocket didn’t say a word, just kept grinning.

“Lose track of the time?” J. D. asked.

“As a matter of fact, yeah. The first time I thought to look at a clock, it turned out to be four A.M. At that point, I figured I might just as well keep going.”

“On what?”

Before the little thief could answer he had to stifle a yawn. Then he started to stand.

“I’ve got to get something to drink.”

J. D. gestured him firmly back into his seat.

“I’ll get you some coffee,” he said, getting up.

“You keep talking.”

“Make it orange juice.” Pickpocket rubbed his tired eyes with the back of a hand.

“I was walking around yesterday, looking at this and that, trying to decide where to eat. Just letting my mind drift, you know, to see where it took me.”

Another bare-the-molars yawn interrupted the narrative as J. D. returned to the table and set a glass of juice down in front of Pickpocket. He took a sip and continued.

“What struck me was how just about every retail operation in the world is

franchised these days: restaurants, bookstores, muffler shops, office supply outfits, you name it.”

“So?”

“So I thought, just for the hell of it, why don’t I look and see what kinds of places our four target towns have? What do Lake Charles, Paris, Americus, and Birmingham have in common other than being in the South?”

“But your computer was here.”

The little thief grinned once more.

“You mess with it?”

“No.”

Pickpocket nodded, deciding J. D. was telling him the truth. He said, “I don’t think I’d have had the restraint.”

“John.” J. D.‘s use of his given name prompted Pickpocket to get serious.

“Okay. I stopped into a twenty-four-hour cybercafe called Digital Ditties, got online, and worked all night.” The little thief leaned forward.

“Among the endless list of franchises our four towns have in common, one name jumped out at me. PostMaster Plus. All four towns have PostMaster Plus franchises, and among their other uses they offer a remailing service. You go into your local store, hand them an envelope, and for a fee you can have it remailed and postmarked from anywhere else they have a store. And they have locations nationwide. Remailing is very convenient when you have to communicate with someone but don’t want them to know where the hell you are.

Battered spouses, government witnesses, people ducking subpoenas, and the like use it.

“Now, it makes more sense to me,” Pickpocket continued, “that whoever is sending you this stuff that’s jamming you up—whatever it is—is using a re mailer Otherwise what you’ve got is a group of people spread across the South who don’t like you, or one guy who’s doing a helluva lot of driving.”

J. D. frowned.

“What?” Pickpocket asked, sitting back indignantly.

“You think I’m wrong?”

J. D. shook his head.

“No, I think you’re probably right. But I also think that people in the situations you describe are likely to pay for their remailing with cash. So why should the people I’m after be any different?”

Pickpocket shrugged.

“Chances are they’re not.” Then the little thief grinned impishly.

“But remember how dumb smart people can frequently be. Look at how I make my living: stealing computer passwords that people are stupid enough to keep in their wallets.”

“Yeah,” J. D. said, but he didn’t sound hopeful.

“Look, you might not see it now, but this is a big break. Right off the bat, I made contact with three hackers who claimed to have a

password that will get me into any level of the PostMaster Plus system,” he said.

“It took me a while to check out their references, but I settled on this guy who calls himself Red. I think he’s really got the goods, and I think he’s someone we can trust… as much as you can trust anyone.”

“So how soon will we know if Red’s the real deal?”

“It’ll take a little while.”

“Why?”

“Because Red has to check out my references.”

“Might it speed things up to do the deal in person?” J. D. wanted to know.

Pickpocket looked at J. D. blankly.

“In person?”

“If Red is anywhere nearby, I’ll add twenty K to whatever you’re swapping to move things along.” J. D. could see that the canny little thief was getting the idea that he was a man in a hurry, but he couldn’t worry about that.

“Hackers meeting in the flesh. Huh. Radical idea. I’ll pass it right along.

But then I’ve really got to crash.”

Evan Cade had covered the sprawling grounds of Southern Illinois University looking for his girlfriend, Pru Laney. Failing to find her, he plopped down on a bench and stared out at the waters of the campus lake. The fall term had just begun, and he knew that missing classes now wasn’t the way to maintain the old 4.0 GPA. But after hearing Richard Sinister talk about how he could be looking at a murder trial, his mind was anywhere but on his classwork.

Shuster’s implication about finding someone else to take the rap for Ivar McCray’s death wasn’t hard to follow: Let’s shift the blame to Barton Laney.

What complicated matters was that Evan had spent the better part of the night Ivar McCray had died with Pru Laney. Alone with her at her father’s house. Doing what young people inevitably did when they found themselves in sole possession of private and comfortable quarters.

Hardly the impartial alibi Sinister had told him he might well need.

Now Evan wondered what Barton Laney had been doing that night. But he couldn’t imagine asking Pru about it. What would he say?

“Hey, babe, you remember that night we had such a good time? You know if your dad was out committing murder right about then?”

Making things even more problematic, now that he thought about it, Pru had seemed to start withdrawing from him after that night. It couldn’t have been the sex, because that had hardly been their first time. But little by little it seemed to Evan she had started avoiding him, being busy when he wanted to go out, not hanging out at the usual places—and

now he couldn’t find her at all. It was like she was dumping him without coming right out and saying so.

Which was why he’d wanted to find her, to see where they stood.

Evan heard footsteps approaching. He looked around and there was Pru, walking along with her friend Jeri Perkins, the two of them lost in conversation, heading for the same bench on which he sat without even realizing he was there.

Evan stood up and said, “Hi.”

Both women jumped, startled, and Pru looked anything but happy to see him.

“Sorry,” Evan apologized.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.”

He said hello to Jeri, but she was so ill at ease seeing him that she quickly excused herself. Standing there alone with Pru, he thought to make a joke that a lack of personal hygiene must be causing people to avoid him. Instead he put his hands on her shoulders and asked, “What’s going on? With you and me.”

Pru had long hair that was almost as dark as Evan’s, and she had green eyes like his. Friends kidded them that they looked too much alike to be dating;

they were probably related without knowing it, and any fooling around would surely be incest. They’d disregarded with glee the possibility of breaking that taboo. But now Pru’s shoulders trembled under Evan’s touch and she stepped back from him.

“Can’t you tell me?” he asked quietly.

Pru’s chin began to quiver and tears welled up in her eyes.

“Don’t you have anything to say at all?”

“My dad’s lawyer told me not to talk to you,” she blurted.

She looked like she wanted to tell him more, but the words caught in her throat. She turned from him and ran away. He didn’t take a single step to follow.

So they had broken up. On the advice of goddamn counsel.

Evan decided to blow off his classes and drive home.

He was far too preoccupied to notice that someone was following him.

Jenny Crenshaw arrived in L.A. ahead of Del and the rest of the brain trust.

There were some local people she wanted to see that the others didn’t need to bother with, not that any of those people would ever be told they were a bother. She pushed through the door of Rawley campaign headquarters and the first thing she heard was a shouting match.

The honest-to-God, curl-your-hair, quick-call-the-cops kind.

Every staffer in the outer-office bullpen had his or her head cocked in the direction of the verbal brawl, all of them looking properly horrified.

“What the hell is going on?” Jenny demanded, hurrying toward the sounds of battle.