Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(47)

But I think he has. He knows where I live, you can look right into my living room from the street, and I think he’s seen it.

The idea that he’s been watched fills Hodges with excitement rather than dread or embarrassment. If he could match some vehicle the Vigilant people have noticed with a vehicle spending an inordinate amount of time on Harper Road—

That’s when the telephone rings.

16

“Hi, Mr. H.”

“S’up, Jerome?”

“I’m under the Umbrella.”

Hodges puts his legal pad aside. The first four pages are now full of disjointed notes, the next three with a close-written case summary, just like in the old days. He rocks back in his chair.

“It didn’t eat your computer, I take it?”

“Nope. No worms, no viruses. And I’ve already got four offers to talk with new friends. One’s from Abilene, Texas. She says her name is Bernice, but I can call her Berni. With an i. She sounds cute as hell, and I won’t say I’m not tempted, but she’s probably a cross-dressing shoe salesman from Boston who lives with his mother. The Internet, dude—it’s a wonderbox.”

Hodges grins.

“First the background, which I partly got from poking around that selfsame Internet and mostly from a couple of Computer Science geeks at the university. You ready?”

Hodges grabs his legal pad again and turns to a fresh page. “Hit me.” Which is exactly what he used to say to Pete Huntley when Pete came in with fresh information on a case.

“Okay, but first . . . do you know what the most precious Internet commodity is?”

“Nope.” And, thinking of Janey Patterson: “I’m old school.”

Jerome laughs. “That you are, Mr. Hodges. It’s part of your charm.”

Dryly: “Thank you, Jerome.”

“The most precious commodity is privacy, and that’s what Debbie’s Blue Umbrella and sites like it deliver. They make Facebook look like a partyline back in the nineteen-fifties. Hundreds of privacy sites have sprung up since 9/11. That’s when the various first-world governments really started to get snoopy. The powers that be fear the Net, dude, and they’re right to fear it. Anyway, most of these EP sites—stands for extreme privacy—operate out of Central Europe. They are to Internet chat what Switzerland is to bank accounts. You with me?”

“Yeah.”

“The Blue Umbrella servers are in Olovo, a Bosnian ville that was mostly known for bullfights until 2005 or so. Encrypted servers. We’re talking NASA quality, okay? Traceback’s impossible, unless NSA or the Kang Sheng—that’s the Chinese version of the NSA—have got some super-secret software nobody knows about.”

And even if they do, Hodges thinks, they’d never put it to use in a case like the Mercedes Killer.

“Here’s another feature, especially handy in the age of sexting scandals. Mr. H., have you ever found something on the Net—like a picture or an article in a newspaper—that you wanted to print, and you couldn’t?”

“A few times, yeah. You hit print, and the Print Preview shows nothing but a blank page. It’s annoying.”

“Same thing on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella.” Jerome doesn’t sound annoyed; he sounds admiring. “I had a little back-and-forth with my new friend Berni—you know, how’s the weather there, what’re your favorite groups, that kind of thing—and when I tried to print our conversation, I got a pair of lips with a finger across them and a message that says SHHH.” Jerome spells this out, just to be sure Hodges gets it. “You can make a record of the conversation . . .”

You bet, Hodges thinks, looking fondly down at the jotted notes on his legal pad.

“. . . but you’d have to take screen-shots or something, which is a pain in the ass. You see what I mean about the privacy, right? These guys are serious about it.”

Hodges does see. He flips back to the first page of his legal pad and circles one of his earliest notes: COMPUTER SAVVY (UNDER 50?).

“When you click in, you get the usual choice—ENTER USERNAME or REGISTER NOW. Since I didn’t have a username, I clicked REGISTER NOW and got one. If you want to talk with me under the Blue Umbrella, I’m tyrone40. Next, there’s a questionnaire you fill out—age, sex, interests, things like that—and then you have to punch in your credit card number. It’s thirty bucks a month. I did it because I have faith in your powers of reimbursement.”

“Your faith will be rewarded, my son.”

“The computer thinks it over for ninety seconds or so—the Blue Umbrella spins and the screen says SORTING. Then you get a list of people with interests similar to yours. You just bang on a few and pretty soon you’re chatting up a storm.”

“Could people use this to exchange  p**n ? I know the descriptor says you can’t, but—”

“You could use it to exchange fantasies, but no pix. Although I could see how weirdos—child abusers, crush freaks, that kind of thing—could use the Blue Umbrella to direct like-minded friends to sites where outlaw images are available.”

Hodges starts to ask what crush freaks are, then decides he doesn’t want to know.

“Mostly just innocent chat, then.”

“Well . . .”

“Well what?”