Signwave (16 page)

I might know how to break into a fortress, but if I didn't know where the fortress was…

So I knew a lot of things I'd probably never have a use for,
but that didn't mean I'd ever throw them out. A man I served with told us that New York cab drivers who were Sikhs would always be left-handed. Nobody had to ask him why that was so; he wasn't drunk enough to fall over, but he'd had enough liquor to believe that we were all spellbound by his stories.

“See, all Sikhs have to carry this little curved knife in their turbans. It's a religious thing with them. Now, all the cabs have these bulletproof shields behind the front seat. So you can't do nothing from back there. What a robber does, he jumps out as soon as the cab stops, then he walks around to the driver's window, holding out money, like he never saw the slot in the shield, see? The driver rolls down his window, and the robber pulls his piece. Or a razor, or whatever. Now, a Sikh, he'll have his own blade out and a big rip in your arm before you can blink. But, see, that only works if his blade is on his left, 'cause that's the side he'll have closest to the window.”

I knew I'd probably never have a use for that, even if what the loose-mouth told us had been the truth.

“How come he didn't have an accent?” I asked Olaf later. “He said he was from New York, but—”

“If he was from Brooklyn, or Queens, you would hear an accent. But if he was raised in Manhattan, his voice would sound the same as if he was raised in Chicago, or Cleveland. It's not like being from Boston—that carries an accent that does not depend on what part of the city you grew up in.”

“Oh” is all I said. That was enough—it was usually what I said after Olaf told me something.

But that photograph…

—

“H
e says, if we give him an image that's already online, he can find out a lot more.”

Mack, repeating what the video ninja told him.

The only image I had was in my head, not online. And, somehow, I knew even if that photo was online there wouldn't be a match.

Something off, but I couldn't feel my way through to it.

I knew her name, where she went to school. I've hunted down men with far less information.

But jungle law always came first. “It is not tracks that will give you away.” Part of Olaf's legacy—he'd known he couldn't tell me everything in the time he had left, so he'd focused on correcting mistakes before I made them.

“Even a fool knows not to leave trail signs after he has finished his work,” he said. “It is the
entrance
you must control. You already know about things like trip wires, land mines, deadfalls. That is not enough to protect you when you work outside this environment.

“When you hunt in a densely populated area, even your
vibrations
must be masked. Every question you ask sends out tremors—you cannot know how far they reach, but every pattern you disturb is a potential alert to your target.

“An alerted target may flee, or may lie in wait. It is never enough to move silently. You must be beyond quiet, beyond stealth. That means any job with a time limitation, you refuse.”

Around here, a Subaru is so common it wouldn't be noticed. But if I told Dolly I needed to use her car too many times,
she'd
notice. Mack's car was a generic, once—now it was so torn up that it might as well be flying a flag. Franklin would lend me his truck in a second, but the license plate would be a problem. Martin would lend me one of his rides, only none of them would work for what I had to do.

If I traveled without a car, it would take me longer. That wasn't a problem. Longer to get there—so what? But not being able to
leave
quickly—that could keep me in a place I didn't want to be.

—

“L
et me make sure I understand this,” MaryLou said.

Her tone was more suspicious than friendly. Still, I'd already told her this was all part of protecting Dolly, so she'd hear me out.

“You want to…have a look at…this girl, only you can't let her see you, and you can't go around asking questions, either. Am I right so far?”

“Yes.”

“And you came to see me because…?”

“Because I don't know anything about colleges. Campuses, things like that. I could never look like I belong, like a student or a teacher. I don't know how to talk like they do. I might as well paint myself green.”

“That could work,” she said.

“If you don't want to—”

“Jeez, you really
are
an alien! What I meant was, that's one of the school's colors. They're so sports-crazed that if someone was walking around wearing a duck's-head mask, the campus security people wouldn't even get a call.”

“But how…?”

“It was a
joke
, okay? I should have known you wouldn't get it. You probably don't even have a sense of humor.”

“I probably don't,” I admitted. “But I don't need one, not for this.”

“What
do
you need?”

“Your help.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don't want you to do anything. I want you to help me with your mind. You know what I want. Can you tell me anything that would help me get it?”

MaryLou was quiet for a minute. I could see her thoughts:
This is a dangerous man. But not a sarcastic one. He wouldn't
waste time coming around to play games. He scares me, but…his word is good. He keeps his promises. And this is for Dolly
.

“Let me think for a couple of minutes.”

I didn't move. She hadn't been asking permission, and I couldn't go wrong being quiet.

“You're dressed okay,” she finally said. “You mind being my father for today?”

I shook my head “no.”

“I drove Franklin to work, so we can use his truck. It's not that long a drive.”

“Just tell me what to do,” I said.

She stood up and looked me over, carefully. “Are you carrying a gun? I can't see it if you are.”

“Yes.”

“Then you'll have to—”

“I'm carrying a permit, too.”

“Let's go” is all she said, plucking the keys to Franklin's truck from a hook screwed into the wall by the door.

—

“I
f they see
me
looking around, they won't think twice about it. And this woman, she wants to be a soccer coach, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Well, if anyone in the athletics department recognizes me, I'll just tell them my father drove me down to give the place the once-over.”

“Like you'd be transferring, maybe?”

“Sure!” she sneered in sarcasm. “They've got a super football program, and they support the holy hell out of track-and-field, too. But if you want the best deal for girls' softball, you want the Southwest. Texas, Arizona…like that. Still, I could be getting married….”

“That makes sense.”

“The story?”

“I didn't think it was a story.”

The sun turned her blue eyes even paler as she half-turned from her position behind the wheel. “It wasn't
that
long ago.”

“The whole town stood up for you, MaryLou. You think they wouldn't want you back?”

“I don't want to
be
back. This place…”

I kept quiet. MaryLou didn't have a reason in the world to ever return to where every memory was a lie or a terror. If it wasn't for Franklin, she'd probably never even cross the border. Franklin, he'd follow MaryLou into Hell wearing a gasoline overcoat if she asked him. But she never would. And the only place where Franklin would ever feel like his world was in balance was working for Spyros.

Another puzzle. For another time.

—

M
aryLou rolled Franklin's truck into the parking lot, zipped down the window, and handled the security guy as easy as she handled anyone who stepped into the batter's box against her.

“Which way to the softball team?”

“You mean, like, the locker room?”

“No, I mean the field,” she snapped off, just short of bratty. “I'm here to see Coach Marrone.”

“Oh. Well, she'll be in her office, this time of day.”

“And that would be…where?”

The guard pulled a laminated map from a side pocket, mused over it for a second, then said, “You want Building Nine. Just walk to the other side of the lot; there's one of these ‘You Are Here' things, and you can—”

“Thanks,” MaryLou said, as if she'd just been mollified. And just in time, too.

—

“T
his isn't the way to Building Nine,” I said.

“I'm not going there. And neither are you,” she told me, taking my arm the way a daughter might, giving me one of those “I can't take you
anywhere
, can I?” looks to complete the picture.

We ended up outside a stand-alone brick structure. It was so covered with different signs, I couldn't even figure out what it was for.

“Fan stuff,” MaryLou said, reading my mind.

“They'll have…?”

“Yes. Or tell me where to find one. School's over. The girl you want, she's a grad, right? This year?”

“Yes.”

“Wait for me outside. Don't lurk—stroll around, but don't go far.”

—

“G
ot it,” she told me.

I wasn't sure what she'd gotten, but that leather bag of hers was big enough to carry a twenty-kilo package of heroin, and she was strong enough to swing it like it was empty. Her body language told me we should get going.

“Here,” MaryLou said, reaching inside her bag, and handing me a book with heavily padded covers and “2015” in huge gold letters on the front.

“What am I…?”

“It's a yearbook. Her picture will be in it. Probably alphabetical order. I couldn't open it up to check while they were looking at me.”

I knew the girl would look older than her classmates—the ghost's info put her in her late twenties—but I wasn't prepared for such a severe separation from “student.”

The inside photos were in color, with stuff like “Debate Club” under each one. Rhonda Jayne Johnson was dressed like a businesswoman in her mid-thirties, dark hair pulled back into what I guessed was some kind of bun, dark lipstick making her lips thinner than I expected, sharp cheekbones. And not smiling.

The photograph the ghost had sent was a girl maybe half the age of the one in the yearbook. In that one, her hair had been fixed into two long pigtails, and she was wearing some kind of school uniform—a blazer with a crest over her left breast. Her lips were much fuller, face a little softer, more rounded.

But it was the same Rhonda Jayne Johnson, beyond doubt.

Then it hit me. The photo the ghost had sent didn't make sense. He would have known I'd need to recognize her by sight. And the dates didn't match, either: how did some schoolgirl get herself cleared to drop info into the
Undercurrents
funnel?

“What you needed?” MaryLou asked.

“I think so.”

“You want to…?”

“No, no,” I assured the tall girl. “I may have to look some other places, but I can go there myself, no problem.”

“Give Dolly my—”

“Why don't you drop me off and come in? That way you can tell her yourself.”

—

W
hile MaryLou was upstairs having some of that tea Dolly brews different ways for different people, I was in my basement, putting together the machine.

|>Photo last sent: how recent? Seen by CIF?<|

I had just started to disassemble the machine when the screen flickered, as if the ghost had been waiting for me to ask those questions.

||

The screen went blank. I unsnapped the slides, reboxed the machine, and started my mind working on why the Commander-in-the-Field—the ghost would know I'd meant the boss at
Undercurrents
—hadn't seen the photo he had sent me. And where the ghost had found it.

But before I threw another
|>
his way, I wanted to consult an expert. And as soon as MaryLou was gone, I would.

—

“C
ould you take ten, fifteen years off the way you look?”

“Dell, I know you're not asking a fashion question. And even if you were, I know you're not asking about me,” she said.

The “you better
not
be” ending to her words was unspoken, but as clear as a red skull-and-crossbones sign on a little black bottle.

“No, no. Don't be absurd,” I said, using a word that would tell her that I was working, not playing. “I was asking if there's…I don't know, makeup tricks, stuff like that. Not a disguise, exactly. But some way a woman almost thirty, say, could have a picture taken of herself so she looked maybe half that?”

“A
photo
? You know there's computer programs that could retouch anything. So…Wait! Are you talking about those software programs that they're always showing on TV, like how a kid who went missing ten years ago would look today?”

“No, precious. I mean something that would work like that, only in reverse. Ten, fifteen years
before
today.”

“Well, that's even easier. Anyone with Photoshop could do that much. Some of the girls who come over here do it when they're being silly—see how they'd look with different-color hair, or purple eyeshadow….What do they call it? A ‘cyber-makeover,' that's it.”

“Not a photo, Dolly.”

“How much time would they have?”

“I don't understand,” I said, now even more lost than I'd been when I started.

“Well, if you lost a lot of weight, that would—”

“No,” I cut her off. “Something where you could look like one age, then go into another room and come out looking like you were much younger. Not
you
, I mean—”

“Yes. Sure, you could. Depending on certain things. Like, if you were really skinny, you probably couldn't add weight that quick. But if you wore your hair differently, or had it cut, or—”

“Your clothing, too?”

“Well…up to a point. And that would depend on how well other people knew you, how close you were standing….”

“Say you never met. In person, I mean.”

“You're back to that cyber-thing again?”

“I guess….On a computer, you could look like a grown-up to one person and a kid to another, right? I don't mean a baby, just like a teenager to one and an adult to a different one.”

“Sure,” she said. Unsaid: Who
wouldn't
know that?

“Then why…?”

“This isn't like you, Dell. Just ask me whatever it is you want to know. Why be so…delicate about it?”

“I wasn't trying to be. I just don't know the questions I'm supposed to be asking.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I have a photograph—an actual picture, I'm saying.
Then I have another picture, but that one's in my head. And in that one, the same woman looks like a kid just starting high school.”

“Someone you remember from…?”

She cut herself off before she reopened a wound. A wound I always told her I didn't have.

“Okay, like this,” I said. “The picture where the woman looks like a…girl,
that
one's the most recent. But when she”—a lightning-flash thought warned me against even mentioning
Undercurrents
—“applied for a job, she used a photo that made her look much older.”

“What good would that do her? Sooner or later, if she got the job, she'd have to show up for work.”

“What if the job…what if the job was one she could do from home?”

“It doesn't matter. I can't think of any job where you wouldn't need a résumé of some kind. Credentials, references, stuff like that.”

“There must be—”

“Cyber-sex!” Dolly burst into what I was saying. “It's like phone sex, where the man just
imagines
what the woman he's talking to looks like. It's like that TV show the girls go on about. Some slob who never goes out of the house pretends he's this sixpacked hunk with a Ferrari in the garage. Even has his picture on his Facebook page, too. Only it's all a fraud. And some of it can get real ugly, like if some vicious girls get together and make up a dream lover for another girl. Then, after they get her hooked, they humiliate her by putting up the whole story for everyone to see.”

“That's…Well, that's cruel, sure, but—”

“You don't understand.” Dolly was so angry that her words ripsawed out of her mouth. “Do you know what some of those poor girls end up doing? One girl, she got ‘played' into believing
that this guy from a town that was a couple of hundred miles away was going to take her to the prom, so their first date would be ‘special.' When these disgusting little…when those miserable swine who thought it would be such fun to just
torment
that girl, they had this nonexistent guy post on
her
Facebook page that she must be insane to be telling anyone he'd ever take her anywhere except maybe to a 4-H Club if he wanted to win a blue ribbon in the pig contest….Do you know what she did
then
?”

I didn't even want to guess.

“Well,
do
you, Dell? She killed herself! She put on her pretty prom dress and went out to the garage. She ran a hose from the exhaust into the car, closed the windows, and started the engine. Then she cried herself to death.”