SPYWARE BOOK (24 page)

Quickly, they set to work taping up Vance. Soon, he looked like a silver mummy.

. . . 26 Hours and Counting . . .

“And what are you doing here, Sarah?” asked Agent Vasquez. Sarah looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. Tears ran down her face.

“One of them must be dead,” she said. She pointed in to the living room at the blood-splattered couch.

Vasquez pushed past her and examined the couch. Johansen stood near her, watching.

“It’s fresh. Tacky, but not dry yet. It’s not my field, but this can’t be more than an hour old.”

“Any sign of the cause?” asked Johansen. He stood watchfully near Sarah. He made it look innocent, but Vasquez could tell by the tension in his shoulders that he was keeping a tight eye on her. Vasquez smiled to herself as she continued to examine the couch. He was always the watchdog.

“Yes,” she said. “There appears to be a hole in the cushion. It goes right through into the wall behind the couch. It’s got to be a bullet hole.”

Sarah fell back against the kitchen wall and closed her eyes. “What’s happening?” she asked. “My whole life is falling apart. Can’t you people do anything but follow the trail? Can’t you stop anything?”

Vasquez approached her. “It’s time that you helped us too, Sarah,” she said. “What more do you know?”

“I know that Ray believed Ingles is the one. And I think he’s right.”

“The one?” asked Johansen. “The one what?”

“The one who kidnapped Justin. The one who released the virus and made it all seem like Ray did it.”

“And what about Brenda,” he asked.

“That too.”

“Hmm,” said Johansen. He arched his eyebrows. “It all seems a bit easy to blame someone else without any proof of anything.”

“Well what about this blood?” she demanded. “Here is some more evidence of violence.”

“All we know is that everywhere your husband goes crimes keep happening.”

Sarah dropped her face and bit her lip. Her hair hung in her eyes. Vasquez gestured to Johansen that he should get lost.

“I’ll go outside and look around,” he said, he caught her eye and gave her a look that said he didn’t think the woman-to-woman chat was going to fix anything. Vasquez just repeated her get lost hand-motion. He let the porch screendoor slam behind him.

“What else is up, Sarah? Why are you so sure that Ray is right about Ingles?”

“Because we had an affair. Ingles and I, I mean.”

Vasquez crossed her arms and nodded. Sarah looked up and then quickly dropped her eyes to the floor again. Vasquez waited, knowing that often the best way to get information was to simply listen.

“It was a short thing, a fling, I suppose people might call it.”

“When?”

“Before Ray and I married. Almost eight years ago now.”

“Nothing happened while you were married?”

“No, he tried to communicate for awhile, sent flowers, left notes on my car. But we never saw each other.”

“Sounds like old news. So why would they be ready to kill over it?”

“Robert,” she snuffled, dug a Kleenex out of her purse, then continued, “I mean Ingles—he got all weird about it. He freaked out and scared me, that’s partly why I dropped him. Besides, things became more serious with Ray then.”

“Were you ever seeing them both at the same time?”

Sarah hung her head. Her pretty hair hid her face. “It ended sometime after Ray and I got engaged.”

Vasquez nodded. She toed the floor between them. “So, you left him for Ray.”

Sarah nodded.

“Does Ray know any of this?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

“I wish you had told us this earlier, but I’m glad you did now, at least,” said Vasquez. She walked over to the stove and touched the teapot that sat there. It was still warm.

Johansen came back in. “I’ve got the sheriff’s unit on the way to check out the bloodstains and the bullet hole. I can’t find any sign of a struggle outside. All the cars are gone and everything looks peaceful.”

He looked from one to the other of them. “Did I miss something?”

“I’ll tell you later,” said Vasquez.

#

Out in the orchard, less than a mile from the house, Spurlock and Ingles worked to rid themselves of Ray.

“All right, now we’ve got him all trussed up like a chicken,” said Spurlock. He laughed. “A big, foil-wrapped chicken. Now what?”

“We’ll put him back in the pickup and cart him away from here,” suggested Ingles.

“But what—” Spurlock began then broke off as a car passed by beyond the almond trees. He watched its blurred shape cautiously. He pointed toward the car. “Is there a road just over there?”

“Yes, but there’s never much traffic,” said Ingles. “It’s a dead end. Only goes down to a few farms and then stops.”

“Okay, back to Vance,” said Spurlock, “I can’t drive him far in the back of this pickup. Even if we cover him, he’ll flop around when he comes to and attract attention. He might even be awake now, faking us. I didn’t hit him that hard.”

“I’ve got a camper shell back in the garage. My plan is to put it on the truck and that should solve the problem.”

Spurlock shook his head again. “No, I don’t think so, I don’t want to go back to the house right now. The place seems too hot to me. I want to get out of here.”

Ingles opened his mouth to continue the argument, but then the big car out on the road came back by again, traveling more slowly this time. It was the same large, white vehicle. Ingles and Spurlock watched it slow to a stop, then begin backing up.

“Cop,” said Spurlock with certainty. “C’mon, let’s get King Tut here into the back.” Heaving together, they lifted Vance over the edge and rolled him into the bed of the truck. Ingles limped into the driver’s seat and Spurlock scrambled into the cab on the passenger side.

“Give you a dollar to a pound of shit that he’s comin’ down this dirt track of yours to see what we’re up to. Told you this place was too fucking hot to hang around.”

Ingles didn’t bother to argue, but rather fired up the Ranger and ground the gears. Every time he shifted, more sweat popped up on his forehead. He pulled the Ranger off the canal bank and bounced down into the green gloom of the almond trees. Spurlock watched him and he knew something about wounds. That foot was going to get worse. It was going to get to where Ingles couldn’t walk and probably couldn’t drive. That meant Ingles was fast becoming useless, as far as Spurlock was concerned.

“I don’t see any lights on it,” said Spurlock, craning his neck to look out the back window.

“Maybe it’s unmarked.”

“He’s coming down the track, I think he’s reached the pump house. Huh.”

“What?”

“The car, it’s a Lincoln. A real big one. They don’t give those to cops.”

Ingles looked at him. “A Lincoln Towncar?”

“Yeah.”

Ingles stomped on the brakes and did a tight U-turn in between the trees. He headed back to the pump house.

“What the hell are you doing?” demanded Spurlock. “It might be FBI or some other kind of Fed.”

By then it was too late, as the guy in the Lincoln had to have seen them by now. Spurlock had visions of Feds and bars and filthy toilets without lids. The Lincoln was trying to turn around, but the trees and the vast, boat-like length of the car were inhibiting him. Sand and gravel spit out from the beneath the car.

“Huh. Looks like he’s trying to run from us. You know this guy, Ingles?”

“Indeed, I do.”

By the time the driver had gotten the car turned around and pointed back toward the main road, the silver Ranger pulled out of the trees and blocked his path. A very surprised John Nogatakei climbed slowly out from behind the wheel of his Lincoln.

#

Ray awakened groggily. A thousand aches and pains assaulted his senses. The most irritating of which happened to be a left shoulder. It seemed bent and locked in an uncomfortable position, almost dislocated. He squirmed, but was only partly able to relieve the pain. Something resisted his every movement. It was difficult to get air into his lungs, the feeling of suffocation was horrible. It sat on his chest like a living thing. Panic reared its leering head and he had to fight to control himself. He believed for a few moments that he was in a sleeping bag, or perhaps a blanket. But it was much tighter than that. Even his face was wrapped up, leaving only a hole or two over his nostrils and a narrow slit over his right eye. He heard conversation, but couldn’t turn his head toward it.

He lay back, tried to breathe evenly. At least he was still alive. He rolled his one eye this way and that, taking in what he could. He seemed to be laying on hard, ribbed surface under the open sky. He smelled dust, oil and hot engine. The bed of a pickup? He could only guess.

A door crumped. Then second one followed. Ray felt a shimmer run through the truck bed beneath him. “If that’s a cop, he needs to lay off the donuts,” remarked the voice of the man who had pistol-whipped him. What had Ingles called him? Spurlock.

“Ingles, I’m glad I found you,” said Nog’s voice with a nervous laugh. Ray tried not to react. He appeared to have awakened into a meeting of conspirators. Instantly, Ray suspected that Nog had led him into all this. But then, if it had all been a setup, why had Ingles let two of his toes get blown off before calling in Spurlock?

“You know this geek?” demanded Spurlock.

“Indeed. Spurlock, meet John Nogatakei, otherwise known as Nog. Nog, Mr. Spurlock.”

“Who is this guy?” asked Spurlock.

“Nog is the brilliant creator of the virus that started this whole adventure.”

“Then I ought to blow his ugly face off right now,” complained Spurlock. “So Nog, if you’re our buddy, how come you tried to take off when you saw us?”

“I—I wasn’t sure who you were,” stammered Nog. “I came down this back road to avoid running into anyone.”

“Nog, we weren’t to have any further contact,” said Ingles. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“We have to talk, Ingles,” replied Nog, “privately.”

“What we have to do,” growled Spurlock, “is get the fuck out of Dodge, man!” Ray thought he heard the men grapple one another briefly. There was a scuffling sound in the dirt and someone fell against the side of the pickup, making it rock on its springs.

Nog’s voice came next, and it sounded closer and higher pitched, perhaps on the edge of panic. Ray surmised that Spurlock had grabbed him and thrown him against the pickup.

“Wait a minute, man! I’m on your side! I—” he broke off here as a series of thudding sounds commenced. Nog shrieked and Ray quailed as a shadow loomed over his limited field of vision. Nog’s face, twisted in pain, doubled over the side of the pickup bed. Nog and he made eye contact—Ray’s one wide, staring eye meeting Nog’s own grimacing glance. Nog registered the shock of recognition, then pain as more blows sounded behind him.

“I’ll find your kidneys in all this blubber somewhere, punk,” growled Spurlock.

“That’s quite enough, Mr. Spurlock,” said Ingles.

“Well, what the fuck are we supposed to do with this whale? For all we know he’s just led the posse right to us! We’ve got to get out of here, man!”

“Beating our co-conspirator serves no purpose, Mr. Spurlock,” said Ingles. “He has after all, provided us with an answer to our dilemma concerning Vance.”

“You mean the Lincoln?”

“Precisely. That trunk will provide ample room for transporting our mummified cargo.”

“Huh,” said Spurlock. “I suppose you’re right, but I still don’t trust this frigging nerd.”There came another thump that shivered the truck again. Nog lurched in pain and Ray figured he had just been kicked in the rear. Ray realized right then that Nog must have come back to look for him. He must have wondered what had happened. He felt a pang of regret for Nog’s predicament, despite everything.

More sounds of doors crumping open and closed came to Ray. Nog looked down at him. Ray watched the man worry at his tongue, and somehow, this time, the sight didn’t sicken him.

“I’m sorry, Vance,” Nog whispered.

Ray blinked his eye. It was all he could do to respond.

Nog looked over his shoulder, then back down at Ray. “I’ll do what I can,” he hissed.

Then he was gone, and all Ray could see was the blue sky with drifting clouds of gray and white.

. . . 25 Hours and Counting . .

Spurlock and Ingles had no sooner loaded Vance into the trunk of the Lincoln and slammed down the lid than they heard the big car thrum into life.

“What the fu—?” demanded Spurlock, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the big white car’s engine. It spit a cloud of dust and gravel into their legs and half-bounced, half-rolled off the canal embankment.

“He’s running!” shouted Ingles as he limped for the open door of the Ranger. As Nog skimmed past the pickup, the Lincoln scraped the rear bumper with a screech of metal on metal. The car plunged into the almond trees like a submerging whale.

Ingles had the pickup going in seconds. He almost backed over Spurlock, who grabbed the open passenger door as it flew by and swung himself into the cab.