Cherry Bomb (6 page)

CHAPTER
11

“
I
WAS WONDERING
when you’d call, Jackie. Did you buy a ham?”

“Haven’t had the chance. We need to meet. Where are you?”

“The Crimebago is mobile, sis. I can meet you anywhere.”

I winced. “
Crimebago
?”

“
Crime
plus
Winnebago
.
Crim-e-bago
. I was gonna have the name painted on the side, along with a chick in a garter belt riding a Harley, but since I’m using it for detecting, it’s better to keep things inconspicuous.”

As if a motor home was inconspicuous.

“Can you clone a cell phone?”

“Hell yeah, I can clone a cell phone.”

“Okay, meet me at the Washington Mutual bank on Diversey and Clark.”

“You got it, sis. I’ll—”

I hung up on him, crossed the street, and entered the WaMu, grateful they were open until six. The woman in line ahead of me had a pillowcase full of coins, and the teller fussed over her, both of them making predictions about the dollar value.

I finger-combed my wet hair back, probing the stitches on my scalp. They itched. I probably had an infection. Hopefully I wouldn’t die until I saw this through.

The change-counting machine spit out a receipt, and the teller gave the woman some cash, including a few coins, which went directly into the empty pillowcase. There was a metaphor for life somewhere in there, but I was too preoccupied to look for it.

“Can I help you?”

“I need to close an account.”

I gave the teller Latham’s bank card. After we became engaged, we added our names to each other’s bank account. I never touched his money, but Latham insisted on this as a precaution. Wills meant the IRS took a chunk, and probate took time. He said this was easier.

Practical Latham. I hadn’t given much thought about what I’d do with his money. I didn’t feel like I deserved any. I figured I’d split it among his relatives, maybe give some to charity. I didn’t have much of my own in the bank, but it was important I paid for his funeral out of my funds. The least I could do.

“Both the checking and the savings, Ms. Daniels?”

“Yes, please.”

The teller pressed some buttons.

“Are you sure you want to take all of it out?”

“Yes.” I paused, considered my reason. “I’m going hunting.”

Since Alex’s call this morning, I figured that would be the best use of Latham’s money.

“I need to speak to my supervisor to authorize a cashier’s check for this amount. Can you hold on for a moment, Ms. Daniels?”

“Sure. Out of curiosity, how much is the amount?”

“Four hundred and eighty thousand, six hundred and thirty-six dollars.”

I was sure I didn’t hear that right.

“Excuse me?”

She swiveled around the monitor so I could see. Latham had close to a half a million dollars in his accounts.

While Latham never seemed to hurt financially—he lived in a nice condo, had nice things—he never mentioned having this much money. I tried to recall any conversation we had that would explain this. And then I remembered one, from a few weeks ago.

“My CDs just matured. I think instead of letting them roll over, I’m going to try my hand at the stock market. What do you think?”

“You’re the accountant. I don’t know anything about investments. I’m just a lowly cop.”

“We could just take it all to Vegas, bet it on a single roulette spin.”

“You hate Las Vegas.”

“But wouldn’t that be exciting? A whole life’s work, doubled or lost in the blink of an eye.”

“I’d never do that. I can’t afford to lose the whole three hundred bucks.”

Then he’d told me he had three hundred in his wallet, and coyly asked if I’d like to double my net worth. We’d gone into the bedroom.

The last time we’d ever made love.

I couldn’t hold the tears back. I flat-out lost it in the middle of a WaMu, sobbing so hard it burned my tear ducts, crumpling to the floor and burying my face in my hands and hating myself so much that I barely even noticed as some strangers half carried me to a chair.

I cried until my mouth went dry.

A foghorn brought me back. I looked around, wondering if it was the bank alarm, hoping some ski-masked robbers had broken in so I could beg one to shoot me.

The horn blared again. Coming from the street.

The Crimebago.

And suddenly, I had a reason to live. I pushed the pain back, deep inside, and vowed not to let it out again. I’d deal with it later.

Someone offered me a box of tissues. I took a handful, filled them up with liquid self-pity, and tossed them in a can under a desk. Then I cleared my throat, stood up, and held my chin high.

My voice was steady when I said, “I’ll just take a five-thousand-dollar withdrawal. Cash.”

Another honk. I fished out my cell and called Harry.

“If you honk one more time, I’m going to impale you on the steering column.”

“Sounds fun.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“See if they have any extra pens. I don’t have any pens.”

I hung up and waited at the counter while a teller counted out a never-ending stack of hundreds. First using the automatic bill counter, then by hand.

“Anything else, Ms. Daniels?”

The pen on the counter had one of those chains on it, so I sheepishly asked, “Does your bank have any pens?”

She handed me one with the bank phone number printed on it. I crammed the money into my purse, thanked her, and walked out to greet Harry McGlade.

The Crimebago was obscenely huge, the size and shape of a bus, white with blue and red stripes. There were six windows on the side facing me. I rapped on the center one attached to the trailer door.

The door swung out and a grinning, leering McGlade offered me a hand up. I chose to grip the door frame instead.

“Welcome aboard, Jackie. Did you grab me a fistful of pens?”

I handed him the pen.

“Only one? Weren’t they free?”

Unsurprisingly, the interior smelled like the same aftershave Harry apparently bathed in, so strong it made my nostril hairs curl. Also, for reasons only known to McGlade, the air-conditioning was on, making every pore on my body pucker into gooseflesh.

“So, you like it?”

“It’s freezing.”

“Yeah, I’m having some climate control problems. I’ve got the oven on to offset that. You want a tour?”

“I need you to clone a cell phone first.”

“That can wait.”

“It can’t wait.”

“It has to. Cloning a phone ain’t easy. I’ve got a reader that can copy the SIM and put it on a new card, but it takes a few hours. What do you need it for?”

“Alex is going to kill a cop. She gave me a phone, and she sends me clues. I can’t give it up, because it’s my only link to her. But I can’t keep the phone from the police.”

Harry scratched himself someplace I didn’t want or need or like to see.

“Cloning won’t work. If a phone gets cloned, only one can work at a time. The cops couldn’t listen in, and they wouldn’t get Alex’s messages. Or you wouldn’t—it depends who is closest to a cell tower.”

Shit.

McGlade took my elbow and walked me past a large sofa to the rear of the cabin. The floor was carpeted. The walls were trimmed in dark wood that matched the cabinets.

“This is the galley. It’s called a galley, not a kitchen. And this is the bathroom, but it’s called the head. I like that name. Head.”

“Can you trace a cell phone call?”

He shrugged. “Yes and no. I could get the number she’s calling from, but could only pinpoint it to within a few hundred yards.”

“What if she spoofed it?” I asked.

“Then no. This is the bedroom. There’s no bed, because it’s in the wall and comes out when I press the button to activate the sideout. It’s totally James Bond cool. Wanna see?”

“Not really.”

McGlade pressed the button anyway. The wall extended outward and a Murphy bed levered down. King size, with red velour sheets.

“You’re a chick. Does seeing this make you want to get naked?”

“No.”

“I’m getting a mirror installed on the ceiling next week. Would that seal the deal?”

“There’s no way to trace it through the phone company?”

He pressed the button again. The bed began to rise.

“You know how cell phones work, right? By radio transmission. So they need antennas. Chicago has a few, and each handles thousands of calls every second. We’d have to contact every cell phone provider in the country, get their rec ords, and go through each billing minute one at a time to find out which one matched Alex’s call to get the ID number. There had to be tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of calls at that time.”

The small amount of hope I’d brought with me was quickly fading away. Then I remembered what Hajek said.

“Could you trace it by analyzing the SIM card? If she’s sending text messages?”

Harry looked thoughtful, then scratched himself again. It was like he had a metal hand and a pair of magnets in his scrotum.

Actually, he did have a metal hand. But he didn’t use that for scratching, and probably with good reason. I’d seen Harry accidentally crush a doorknob with that hand.

“That might actually work, sis, because texts are saved on the card. The spoof fools caller ID, but it might not fool the SIM.”

Harry walked past, into the lounge area opposite the sofa. He flipped a switch on the wall and a cabinet opened, a table coming down. It had a built-in keyboard and a flat-screen monitor, which flipped up. He dug a small white box out of a drawer and attached a cord to one end, plugging the other into a USB slot on the keyboard.

“Open the back of the phone and gimme the SIM.”

I pried out the little data card and handed it over, then spent a minute tracking down the vent that was blowing cold air in my face. I closed it, but that only made the other vents blow even harder.

“You like my screen saver?”

I glanced at the monitor, expecting to see some naked girl eating a banana. Instead it was a pic of Harry with his arm around my mother. Both were smiling. I felt myself wince.

“It’s…nice,” I managed.

“Me and Mom have a lot of catching up to do. Mother and son stuff.”

“You know, the DNA results haven’t come—”

“Gotcha, you little bastard! There’s the TAP/CIBER, and now I run the decryption program. This will take a few seconds. You get Mom anything for her birthday? I’m thinking a cat.”

Speaking of non sequiturs.

“We’ve already got a cat.”

“I know. Mr. Friskers, right? Is he still meaner than spit?”

“He’s currently in a kitty motel. It’s seventy-five bucks a day, plus we have to pay for injuries to the staff.”

“That could get pricey.”

“Hopefully that groomer won’t need eye surgery.”

“Does Mom like dogs? Or maybe a monkey? I’d like to have a monkey. You can teach them to fetch you things, like beer. A beer monkey. That would be cool. We could smoke cigars and watch
King Kong
together. I love the remake. It’s got the extended footage, which means it’s seventeen hours long. We can watch it later, on Blu-ray, if you want.”

“Were you ever tested for ADHD?” I asked.

“Yeah. But the Ritalin makes me hyper. Okay, the decryption is finished, and…there’s the phone number. I’m amazing.”

Harry pointed at it, and I wanted to punch the screen. It was the same Deer Park number Hajek had given me. My phone wasn’t a direct link to Alex, as I’d hoped. It was part of that call-forwarding daisy chain he had mentioned. I explained this to Harry.

“All’s not lost, sis. I can find the phone in Deer Park, get the SIM, and then locate the next phone in the chain. It will lead to Alex eventually.”

“There could be ten phones in the chain, Harry. You said you can only pinpoint the call within a few hundred yards, and she could have these hidden all over the country.”

“It’s a start. I’ve got an RF detector. I can find the phones.”

I closed my eyes, thinking. Normally, when I was chasing a perp, there were witnesses to interview, evidence to examine, clues to follow up on. Alex was effectively invisible, and could be anywhere. How the hell do you find a person who only shows you what she wants you to see?

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re our only hope here, Harry. There’s no other way to find her.”

“I can do it. It’ll just take some time.”

“Time is something we don’t have.”

“So I see.”

Harry brought the picture up on the monitor, of Lance taped to the bed and screaming. I checked my watch.

“Unless we can find him, he’s dead in just over eleven hours.”

Harry didn’t say anything, which was out of character. I wondered if the picture brought him back to the time he was Alex’s captive. She was the reason he had a prosthetic hand, and though he never talked about it, I knew a blowtorch played a part.

“We’ll find him,” Harry eventually said.

“How, if we can’t trace her calls?”

“She left us a clue.”

“What clue?”

“He’s a cop named Lance. Probably hundreds of those in the U.S. But how many have one of these?”

Harry pointed to the metal tripod, which held the thing that looked like a microphone over Lance’s head. I leaned in closer, squinting, and couldn’t believe I missed it earlier.

“It’s a pigstick,” I said.

“Yeah. Looks like old Lance is on the Bomb Squad. The pigstick is armed with a shotgun shell, attached to a blasting cap. That wire is shock tube, probably leading to a timer. When the time is up, the round fires into poor Lance’s face.”

If Alex was being honest. For all I knew, Lance might already be dead. Or he might not be named Lance at all. I stared at his face again, his agony forever frozen in time. I wondered if Alex was still burning him.

“Alex sent me an earlier text, a few weeks ago. Said she was in Milwaukee. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth or not.”

“She’s a lying crazy psycho bitch. Believing her is a mistake.”