Devoted(96)
When the disposable phone rang, he knew who was calling, for only Haskell Ludlow had the number.
He took the call. “Life is good.”
“Life is complicated,” Haskell said.
“Tell me.”
“Our old friends in the pest-control service located that troublesome cockroach. Now they’re out of business.”
So the principals of Tragedy were dead. But they had found the cockroach, the hacker.
“Our new friends in pest control,” Haskell continued, “are ready to do the job.”
That would be Verbotski and the boys from Atropos.
“But the problem I’ve been dealing with,” Haskell said, “and the problem you’ve been dealing with have become the same problem.”
“How so?”
“You didn’t tell me that one of the ninety-three beat the big bang and hit the road.”
Shacket.
Dorian said. “You didn’t have a need to know. And how did you find out?”
“Yesterday, Mr. Ninety-three was a bad boy. You know how often he was a bad boy?”
“Twice,” Dorian said, referring to the murders of Painton Spader and the Klineman woman.
“Twice yesterday afternoon. But what you evidently don’t know is then he went to her house, made a scene, had to be restrained, but that didn’t work, and now he’s been bad twice again.”
Dorian pushed aside what remained of his breakfast. “Her house? Her who? Can we stop being too cute about this?”
“I don’t feel cute, actually.”
“No one can be listening, and if anyone is, he can’t know who the fuck we are.”
Still being half-cute, Haskell said, “You remember the guy who wanted to shit all over your archaea business?”
Jason Bookman.
“I remember.”
“His widow is in that town. Ninety-three has a thing for her. On the way to her house, he’s bad twice. Then he makes a try for her, ends up in bracelets, so he’s bad twice again and loose.”
“Why don’t I know about more than the first two he did? We own that jerkwater through our friendly AG. We’re supposed to be kept informed. This is supposed to be quashed, like it never happened.”
“That jerkwater isn’t Mayberry RFD, and apparently this particular khaki-ass bastard is a bad piece of work, wants to make himself a lawman star.”
A sludge of vitamin pills rose in Dorian’s throat. He swallowed hard and washed the resurgent wad down with a kale smoothie.
He said, “I’ll break that fucker down to dogcatcher. But I still don’t get how our two problems are one.”
“Our pest-control friends, the ones who aren’t in business anymore, they tracked the hacker to source. The widow.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Somehow she got the Gordius ID and your Tragedy password, and she’s putting together a case.”
“The ungrateful bitch,” Dorian said.
“Maybe you should have let her have that block of shares.”
“By my calculations the option wasn’t vested yet. I’m not fucking Santa Claus. What’s holding you up from finishing the job?”
“The future dogcatcher is providing her with protection in case your bad boy comes back. Six men. They need to stand down, go away and eat some doughnuts.”
“I’ll get right on it. And what about Mr. Ninety-three?”
“He beheaded some hapless sonofabitch, jacked his pickup, a fancy hot-rod truck, easy to spot. So now they figure he’s long gone from that area, although they don’t want to take a chance with the widow. Something totally X-Files is going on with this guy. You have any idea what?”
Staring at the congealing eggs and avocados and crabmeat on his breakfast plate, Dorian said, “No. I don’t. Not a clue.”
104
Sheriff Hayden Eckman retreated to his residence on Sierra Way, the nicest street in Pinehaven.
The house provided ample space for a single man, was pleasantly furnished, included all the latest appliances, but the sheriff was not proud of it. Because he’d known that one day he would live in a much larger, much grander home, this place embarrassed him, not for any inadequacy in it, but because when eventually he achieved the status he deserved, he would not be able to say that he’d always lived at such a pinnacle, had always been among the elite. To a degree roots could be faked, the past papered over with lies, but some people would remember it was here that the great man had once lived, when he’d worn a uniform and been far too close to common.
Now he had to cope with the recognition that perhaps this was the grandest residence he would ever know. Which was so unfair. He had done everything right. He used his law degree to promote himself into the role of sheriff and salted the department with loyalists who were supposed to make sure everything occurring in Pinehaven County law enforcement would redound to his credit, even to his glory. He networked assiduously with leaders in adjacent counties and in Sacramento. He used far less campaign funds for personal expenses than he would have liked. He had $300,000 in cash, taken from Shacket’s Dodge Demon, when he could have been greedy and taken the other $100,000 that he had left in the car. And in spite of doing everything right, he now stood on the brink of disaster, ruin.