Uncommon Grounds (24 page)

I waved him into the room, discreetly kicking my discarded running clothes under the couch. “Just sweat. We were out running.”

“You and Frank?” He laughed and sat down, reaching over to pat the dog and then pulling back. “Whoa. I hope you smell better than he does.”

I plopped down in the chair across from Pavlik. “I took the first shower, he’s waiting for the water to heat up again. So what have you found out? Is there a connection between David and the militia?”

Pavlik held up his hands. “I thought you were going to keep quiet about that.”

I looked around the room. “Unless Frank is going to squeal, I think we’re safe talking here.”

Pavlik didn’t answer. “Listen,” I said, “I have to talk to someone about this or explode. Given your little rules, like it or not, that someone has to be you.” Or else why the heck are you here?

“I do need to ask you some questions.”

Ah. I had a hunch he meant to ask me those questions and then escape quickly before I could get any answers myself. I had some experience in that field.

“Okay,” I said agreeably, “but let me get something to drink first. I’m dying of thirst. Can I bring you something?” I stood and ticked off the options on my fingers. It was a short list. “Coke, Jolt, Diet Coke and Mountain Dew.”

“Interesting selection.”

“If it doesn’t have caffeine, I don’t own it. So what’ll it be?”

Pavlik chose Coke and I went into the kitchen to get it and a can of Diet Coke for myself. As I crossed from the refrigerator to the cupboard to find glasses, a tennis ball came bouncing through, followed by a sheepdog moving at warp speed.

Pavlik was obliging Frank in his favorite game, “chase the slimy tennis ball.” Frank ran headfirst into the cabinet. I gave up on the glasses and returned to the living room, almost getting flattened by him on the return trip.

“Wouldn’t you just like to take him home with you?” I asked, handing Pavlik his Coke.

He tossed Frank his ball and wiped his hands off on a handkerchief. “Nah. I don’t think Muffin would handle it very well.”

I laughed. “Your pit bull is named Muffin?”

“Yeah, well, my daughter named her.”

Now here was new information. “You have a daughter? How old?”

Pavlik pulled out his wallet. “She’s ten.” He showed me a picture of a serious dark-haired girl with big gray eyes.

“She has your eyes.” I didn’t ask what she had inherited from her mother. Or where her mother was. Then again, I didn’t have to. I already knew it all from the Internet.

He tucked the picture away and returned the wallet to his back pocket. “Tracey lives with her mother most of the time, even though we have joint placement. I don’t exactly keep regular hours.”

“Maybe it’s best that she’s in one place. She’s so little.” It was tough for a kid to keep track of two sets of friends, two sets of clothes, two sets of toys and, often, two sets of parents.

“She has a much more stable life with Susan than I could give her. I don’t even have weekends free most times. I’d just be shipping her off to babysitters.”

“Do they live in Chicago?”

“No, Susan got a job in Milwaukee. That’s why I moved up here. I couldn’t ask her not to take the job and I couldn’t let them move two hours away. So I came, too.”

So the Chicago address for Susan had been outdated, too. I felt a twinge. “That was a big sacrifice for you, wasn’t it? I mean leaving the Chicago police force to come here?”

“I thought so at the time, but it was probably the best decision of my life. I didn’t realize until I got away, what my job was doing to me. Not a night went by when there weren’t multiple murders, drug deals going down, gang fights, kids getting shot in the street. I just thought that was the way life was. Until I came here.”

“Where we have militias,” I said wryly.

“Believe me, we had that and more down there. Which brings me to my question.” He set down his Coke. “We caught a break. Groschek was a computer hacker. He communicated with other members by e-mail. He trashed the messages, but some were still in his cache file. We have a list of screen names we’re sifting through.”

He pulled a sheet of paper out of his breast pocket and handed it to me. “Does this one mean anything to you?”

I looked at the paper: ngdseyed.

“Just a bunch of letters,” I said, passing it back to him. “Can’t you trace it through the Internet provider? I read about some kid they tracked down through AOL, because he was making on-line threats.”

Pavlik set the list on the table. “Groschek was using a remailer. Remailers are—”

“I’ve heard of them,” I said, remembering my Internet adventure with Sarah. “But I thought you said you caught a break.”

“It turns out that Groschek also enjoyed creating new computer viruses.”

“That’s good?”

“In a way, because it fits the profile. It seems you may have been right about him tampering with the espresso machine after all.”

I didn’t get it. “What does creating viruses have to do with hotwiring espresso machines?”

“Different crimes are committed by different kinds of criminals. Some are very personal crimes. You’ve heard, probably, that if someone is stabbed in the head and face, we look for someone they know.”

I nodded.

“A bomber is on the other end of the spectrum. Bombing is a long-distance crime. He sets it and leaves. The damage is done when he’s gone. Same thing with the computer viruses and, in this case, rewiring the espresso machine.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. Pavlik wasn’t done. “But, that doesn’t mean David Harper wasn’t involved. In fact, I’m sure he was, after talking to your friend Pete. I just don’t know how deeply.”

Speaking of who might be involved in what, I filled him in on my Bible Study theory.

He smiled and his eyes lit blue. “Not bad, but don’t go getting paranoid. Even if people at Christ Christian are involved, most of them are probably harmless. This is just a lark for them. But any movement attracts loners who are looking for a place to belong. Somewhere to be important. Those are the people who can go off.”

“Like that guy who killed those people at the abortion clinic,” I said slowly. “The legitimate pro-lifers condemned the killings.”

We sat for a second. Finally, Pavlik set down his Coke can and got up. “Well, thanks for the caffeine. I’ll let you know if we come up with anything else.”

I wondered why he was being so obliging. Frank and I dogged him to the door. “Thanks. I appreciate that.” See? I could be nice, too.

Pavlik opened the door to leave. “So don’t worry about anything. Just keep your mouth shut and don’t do any more nosing around. These groups are like bees. Leave them alone and they’ll likely leave you alone. Let the Feds get to the bottom of this.”

I watched him walk down the sidewalk to his car.

Had I just been finessed? Thursday night, Pavlik said the Feds were involved and threatened me with “protective custody” if I got in the way. Then today, he took great pains to assure me the militia—if it existed at all in Brookhills—was harmless.

Then he warned me not to mess with them.

I unlocked the front door I had just locked behind Pavlik and let Frank out for his evening constitutional. I was thinking about Henry and his constitutional. And the militia and their constitutionally-inspired constitutional.

I wandered into the living room. What in the world was going on in Brookhills? I absently picked up the Coke can Pavlik had been drinking from and the damp paper beneath it.

As I started to crumple up the paper, I realized it was the screen name Pavlik had shown me. I tossed the can into the recycling bin in the kitchen and sat down at the desk with the paper. Summoning a Word document on my computer, I typed:

ngdseyed

I sat back and stared at it.

It was starting to seem familiar somehow, though I had no idea why. Maybe I really had seen it before, or it was reminding me subliminally of some other word. Or I’d just been staring at it for ten minutes.

I typed it again, putting a space between each letter.

ngdseyed

Saturday night and this is what I had been reduced to, I thought. Word puzzles. Maybe after this, I could crochet something.

Okay, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Let’s try sounding it out:

“n-geds-eyed”

“n-geds”

No, how about “gods,” that would make more sense with this group.

“nogged sighed”

“n-Gods-eyed”

“In Gods eyed.”

“On God’s eyed...”

I sat back in my chair. On God’s side. Of course. Everybody thought God was on his or her side. Even the bad guys.

But where did deciphering the e-mail address get me? I still didn’t know who it belonged to. But I was certain now that I had heard or seen “On God’s Side” very recently. Maybe it really was an e-mail address I’d sent to without even realizing.

I opened my e-mail program and hit “Write” for a blank e-mail. If I’d ever sent anything to ngdseyed, I could type in the first letters and my program would automatically complete the rest, right?

I typed “n” and got my nephew Nathaniel’s e-mail address. I added “g” and got...nothing.

Dang. Maybe it was case sensitive. I’d try all caps. I held down the “Shift” key and hit “Return” to go to the next line.

The e-mail disappeared.

In its place was a box that read: “Your message has been sent.”

“Nooooo...”Ijumped out of the chair, staring in horror at the screen. Outside, Frank picked up on my wail and started to howl in chorus. I ran to the door to let him in.

“Oh, my God,” I told him, as he pushed past me to get to his water dish, “you wouldn’t believe what I just did.”

He turned to look at me, gave a toss of his fur and went to get his drink.

I returned to the computer. What had I done? And how had I done it? I’d switched to all caps and then hit the return key to get to the next line. The combination of the two apparently had sent the e-mail. Or had it?

I needed to check my mailbox, but I managed to accidentally hit “Stock Quote,” “Doppler Radar” and “People.com” before I finally clicked “Sent Mail” dead on.

And there it was:

Sent

Date: April 13

Subject: No subject specified

E-mail Address: NGDSEYED

Damn, damn, damn. Could I recall the sent message somehow? Eureka, there was an “Unsend” button. I clicked on it and was rewarded with a “You can not unsend Internet mail.”

So why did they have a frickin’ “Unsend” button? Talk about raising ones hopes and then—

“Mail!”

I jumped about a foot and looked at my computer screen. Sure enough. Mail.

I reached out for the mouse, and then pulled back like the thing was going to bite me. What was I afraid of? It was probably a message from Eric or maybe Sarah or, most likely, a Viagra supplier or porn-site. Any one of them would look mighty good to me right now, because—except for Eric, Sarah and the omniscient spammers—no one else had my new e-mail address, except...

I double-clicked, and there it was:

New Message

Date: April 13

Subject: No subject specified

E-mail Address: NGDSEYED

It was from one of them.

“Well, so what?” I said out loud, and Frank came running from his water dish. He put his big wet muzzle on my knee, and for once I was grateful for the combination of water, drool and dog hair. “After all, they don’t know who I am, any more than I know who they are.”

Frank tilted his head up at me and smiled. Taking strength from his quiet courage, I double-clicked the e-mail to open it.

The message was simple:

“Who is this?”

Chapter Twenty-Three

As should come as no surprise, I didn’t sleep well that night. When I woke up groggy, the clock said 9:30.

There was a 10:30 service at Christ Christian. Instead of hiding in my house for the rest of my life, tempting as that had seemed at 2:00 a.m., I was going to church to confirm something and to talk to Langdon.

I invited Sarah to come with me for both cover and protection, but she had a date for brunch with Gary. Between Sarah and Gary, and Caron and Bernie, love was in the air in Brookhills. Along with bullets.

I had to admit Langdon’s service was inspiring, with lots of heartfelt singing and testaments of faith from the enthusiastic crowd. During the collection Langdon reminded the congregation that God required us to tithe. For those who didn’t know what “tithing” was, he explained that God expected ten percent off the top. I wondered what God did with it up there.

After the service, I hung back so I’d be the last one out of church. When I reached the door where Langdon was shaking hands, I asked if I could speak to him. He looked around like he was searching for a reason to say no, then said yes. We stood off to one side of Fellowship Hall, where church members were wolfing down doughnuts.

“Coffee?” Langdon offered, looking hopefully toward the doughnut table.

“No, thank you. Langdon, did David talk to you about Pa-tricia’s death?”

His thin lips got even thinner. “Maggy, you know I can’t tell you anything that David said to me in confidence.”

“Then he did talk to you.” People turned to look at us.

Langdon held up his hands. “No, no, he didn’t talk to me.”

I didn’t believe him and he knew it.

“Maggy.” He pulled me further into the corner and looked around. “We don’t hear confessions in this church. At Patri-cia’s funeral, David simply asked to speak with me privately. We were going to meet today after church. But...”He held out his hands.

“But David died before you could.”

The minister was shaking his head sadly. “He wanted to see me earlier, but my schedule just wouldn’t allow it. What with six services a week, weddings, funerals. There just wasn’t time.” The eyes behind the thick glasses filled with tears. “Maybe if we had spoken, he wouldn’t have done it.”

“So, now you believe he committed suicide?” I wished everyone would make up their minds.

Langdon was ringing his hands. “Oh dear, oh dear, I don’t know what to believe. The paper essentially said it was suicide.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We can’t bury him in sacred ground, you know, if he committed this horrible sin.”