'In a way?' she said, raising her eyebrows. They both laughed.
St Claire tapped on the door and Vail waved him into the office.
'I just figured out what my nudge is,' he said. 'Something you said about Vulpes's phone calls strikes me as odd.'
'What's that?'
'You said he made a phone call and got a bad connection?'
'That's what Morris told me.'
'Well, if he got a bad connection, how come he didn't try the call again?'
Vail stared across the room at him, then looked at Venable.
'He's right,' she said. 'It's not like he didn't have time to dial again. If I made a call and got a bad connection...'
'You'd either call the operator or try again, right?' St Claire finished the sentence.
Hicks entered Shoat's elegant two-bedroom condo first. He flicked on the lights and walked down the short entrance hall to the living room. He put Shoat's briefcase on his desk. Shoat had bought the condo after his wife died, preferring to get rid of the old house near Loyola University with its painful memories. The two-bedroom condo near the lake was convenient, was in a proper neighbourhood, and was on the ground floor. It suited his purpose perfectly. It had a small deck at the rear that was secluded by a high redwood fence. He enjoyed sitting on this rustic terrace, reading cases and writing out his opinions in longhand. Hicks pulled back the thin, white cotton drapes, flicked on the lights, and slid open the door, checking the deck then closing the door and pulling the drapes closed again. He checked the living room, the master and guest bedrooms and baths, all the closets, and the small sitting room the judge used as an office. 'All clear,' he told his boss.
'Very good, Hicks,' the judge said. 'Don't know what I'd do without you.'
'Look, you want I should maybe spend the night in the guest room what with all this hoopla over…?'
'Don't be silly.' Shoat said, waving him off. 'I'm going to get in bed and watch Court TV for an hour or so. I'll be sound asleep by ten.'
'Right, sir. Seven o'clock in the morning?'
'As usual.'
He followed Hicks to the door, pulling on the night chain and twisting the dead bolt after letting his bodyguard out. He made himself a Scotch and water, turned off the lights, and went into the bedroom.
Shoat was fastidious in his nightly ritual. He set out his clothes for the next day, placed his Scotch and water on the night table, brushed his teeth and scrubbed his face, and changed into scarlet silk pyjamas. He folded his silk bathrobe carefully over a chair within arm's reach of the bed, lined up his slippers side by side exactly where he expected his feet to hit the floor when he arose, piled three goose-down pillows, and fluffed them up just right before finally turning down the covers and slipping sideways between the flannel sheets so as not to wrinkle them. He propped himself up and pulled the feather comforter up under his chin and turned on the television, flicking the remote control to the Court TV channel. Settling down, he sipped his drink and watched with the sound turned Vovj. Within minutes he was trying to keep awake. He finished the drink and clicked off the TV.
He was dozing when suddenly the room seemed to be flooded with cold air. He lay in bed, staring sleepily into the dark. It got colder.
Then he thought he heard something. The sound seemed to be coming from the living room, although he was sleepy and confused in the dark.
'Hicks, is that you?' he called out, thinking perhaps his bodyguard had come back for something and was at the front door. He waited and listened.
There it was again. Was someone talking outside the condo?
Disoriented in the dark, he groped for the lamp and instead grabbed his bathrobe. He stumbled out of bed in the dark, his feet padding the floor of the darkened room in search of his slippers. The room was frigid and he gave up on the slippers and floundered his way towards the living room.
A frosty draught sighed past him as he reached the bedroom door. He looked across the room. The door to the terrace had blown open. The white cotton curtains, flapping and twisting in the wind, looked like apparitions in the ghostly moonlight.
Damn! he thought. Hicks forgot to lock the door to the terrace.
He started towards the door. Then he heard a voice.
'Order. Order in the court.' And a gavel smacking against wood.
The voice seemed to come from the dervish curtains, swirling in the wind. He stepped closer, squinting his eyes to get a clearer look. And then he saw something, a vague shape hidden within the gossamer panels. Shoat was suddenly hypnotized with fear. The shape slowly materialized into a dark form that seemed to emerge from within the whirling folds. It moved towards him. Shoat's mouth turned to sand. His feet would not move.
'W-w-who's that?' he stammered. The figure, silhouetted by the moonlight against the shimmering drapes, raised its hand. There was a click and the same voice, the same husky whisper he had heard a moment before said:
'The prince who keeps the world in awe;
The judge whose dictates fix the law;
The rich, the poor, the great, the small,
Are levelled - death confounds them all.'
There was a slight pause, then: 'Greetings from Daisyland, Judge.'
'Oh, my God!' the judge shrieked. He turned and rushed towards a table near the door, pulled open a drawer, thrust his hand in, and felt the cold steel of his .32-calibre pistol. But before he could pull it from its hiding place, he felt a hand grab his hair and his head was snapped back.
Shoat felt only a slight burning sensation when the knife sliced through his throat. But when he opened his mouth to scream, all he heard was a rush of air from beneath his chin. And then the taste of salt flooded his mouth. When the pain struck, it was too late for Shoat to feel it.
Thirty-Four
It was easy to trace the phone number. Morris had attached a digital readout to the monitor and had the number listed in his log. Stenner made one phone call and got the rest of the information.
'City Hospital,' he said. 'The last three digits, 4-7-8, is the office extension. He was calling the billing department.'
'Why in hell was he calling the billing department at City Hospital?' Vail wondered aloud.
'And why'd he get a bad connection?' asked St Claire.
Meyer, the computer expert, had been sitting in the corner listening to the discussion. He turned to his computer and entered the modem program, then brought up the menu. He dialled the phone number, 555-7478, and listened to it ring as he watched his computer screen. The screen went black for a moment, then the word CONNECT flashed on and another menu appeared across the top of the screen.
'There's your answer,' he said. 'He was calling a modem line. Vulpes was talking to a computer.'
'With what?' Parver asked.
'Yeah. Where'd he get a computer?' St Claire asked.
'I don't know, but that's what the call was all about, that's the hum on the line,' said Meyer. 'If he stayed on for ninety seconds and he's a computer expert, he knew exactly what he was doing.'
'Maybe we ought to roust him and ask him,' said Flaherty.
'On what grounds?' Vail said. 'He's a free man. If he does have a computer, it's understandable. It's his business. But if he's using it to trigger the copycat, then we got him.'
He dialled Morris.
'Yes, sir?'
'This is Martin, Bobby. What's Vulpes up to right now?'
'He's watchin' a video. Sleepless in Seattle.'
'You're sure he's there?'
'We can hear him laughing. Few minutes ago he was singing "As Time Goes By" with Jimmy Durante.'
'Is the back door covered?'
'Sure.'
'You stay on top of this guy, Bobby. He makes any phone calls or does anything out of the ordinary, call the office immediately.'
'Absolutely.'
Vail hung up. 'He's in his room watching a video, they can hear him on the room tap.'
He paced his office for a few moments. 'All right, here's what we're going t
o do,' he said. 'Harve and Ben, come with me. We'll check out the billing department at the hospital. Shana and Dermott, stay here in the office and monitor the phones. And call Naomi right now just to make sure she's protected. Anything happens? Any calls from Morris or anybody else, call me on the portable. Abel, I want you to take Jane home and stay with her, and I mean in the house with her until I get back. I don't trust anyone else but you to protect her. And I want the house guard to patrol the entire perimeter. Any questions? Good. Let's get on with it.'
The emergency ward at City Hospital looked like a battle zone. Three ambulances were parked at the entrance, one with its red light still blinking. Once inside, Vail, Meyer, and St Claire were greeted with a rush of noise and motion. An aide raced by pushing a young woman on a gurney. Her face was covered by an oxygen mask and IVs were protruding from both arms. Her eyes were half open and her head wobbled back and forth with the movement of the stretcher. A young doctor was racing along beside it, shouting orders to a nurse who held open the door to the OR preparation station.
'I got a compound fracture of the lower leg, possible head injuries, I need a CAT scan before we go to OR.'
'We're ready for her,' the nurse yelled back.
Another doctor dashed from the receiving room, his gown streaked with blood, and headed up the hall.
'Excuse me,' Vail said, but the MD waved him off.
'Not now,' he said, and ran off towards the operating room.
Vail looked through the door of Receiving and saw a nurse pull a sheet over a body. Two feet away, a team of doctors and nurses worked frantically to prepare another victim for treatment. A nurse burst out of the room carrying a clipboard.
'Excuse me,' Vail said. 'We're trying to find the night superintendent.'
'Down the hall, lift to the first floor, third door on your left, Mrs Wilonski,' she said without looking at them or slowing down.
'Thanks,' Vail said.
They found the night superintendent's station and a nurse paged Eve Wilonski, the super on duty, then raced off, advising them to stay put.
'If you don't, she'll never find you,' she said.
'Doesn't anybody around here walk?' Meyer asked.
The lift door swung open and a short, square woman in a rigidly starched uniform marched towards them. Her stern face wore the ferocious expression of a bulldog.
'Gentlemen, I'm Eve Wilonski, night super. Sorry I'm in a rush right now, we've got a mess in Emergency.'
'We came up that way. I'm Martin Vail, acting DA'
'Yes, sir, I recognized you from pictures in the paper.'
'These are two of my associates, Ben Meyer and Harve St Claire.'
'Gentlemen,' she said with a nod.
'What happened?'
'Three-car pileup on LaSalle,' she said. 'Three dead, six trying to stay alive. A drive-by on the south side with a dead three-year-old and her mother hanging on by her fingernails. We got two heart attacks and they just brought one in for this psych ward who was standing on the marquee of the Chicago Theatre peeing on people walking by on the sidewalk. That's in the last forty minutes and it isn't even eleven o'clock yet. It's just warming up out there.'
'Sorry to bother you when things are so crazy,' said Vail.
'It's always crazy down there,' she said casually. 'Do we have a problem with the district attorney's office, too?'
'No, we do. I need to take a look at your billing office and also find out if anyone was in there at three o'clock this afternoon.'
'That office closes at two-thirty on weekends,' she said.
'I know. But we have reason to believe that someone was in there at three. It's imperative we know who that person was.'
'Maybe a cleaning person, somebody like that?' St Claire suggested.
'That's quite possible,' she said. 'If it's an emergency, I can call Mr Laverne at home. He's the billing supervisor. Someone could have been working overtime.'
'That would help a lot,' Vail said.
'May I ask what this is about?'
'A hacker,' Meyer said casually. 'We have reason to believe someone may be hacking into your billing computer. The consequences could be serious.'
'Oh, my God,' she said. She flipped through a staff telephone directory, her finger tracking down the rows of staffers and stopping at Laverne's name. She dialled the number and waited for what seemed an eternity.
'He's not home,' St Claire moaned.
'Mr Laverne?' she said suddenly. 'I'm sorry to bother you at home, this is Eve Wilonski. I have the district attorney here. He'd like to speak to you.' She handed the phone to Vail.
'Mr Laverne, this is Martin Vail.'
'Yes, Mr Vail.'
'Mr Laverne, we're checking on a computer problem and we need to know if anyone in your department worked overtime today.'
'I did.'
'You did? Were you there at three o'clock?'
'Yes, sir, I was talking to a pharmaceutical company on the West Coast.'
'Was anyone else in the room at the time?'
'Uh, yes. Hines, I think is the name. Cleans up. Is this about the hacker?'
His question surprised Vail. 'You know about that?'
'I was there when the message came across the modem line.'
'What message?'
'Well, it was crazy. Something about a fox and someone named Hydra.'
'Hydra? Do you remember exactly what the message said?'
'Let's see. First it said "Hydra, Fox is free." Then it repeated the name Hydra a couple of times. Then I jumped in and asked who Hydra was and who was online and the connection went dead.'
'And you say Hines was in there at the time?'
'Yes. Came in while I was on the phone.'
'Thank you, Mr Laverne. You've been a great help.'
'It was a hacker, right?'
'Yes. We're investigating it.'
'I knew it. Too nutty to be anything else. You people always work this late at night?'
'When it's something this important. Thanks, Mr Laverne. Goodbye.' He cradled the phone. 'Do you know someone in clean-up named Hines?'
'Yes. Rudi Hines.'
'Show Ms Wilonski the picture of Tribble,' Vail said to St Claire.
Harvey took a flat wallet out of his pocket and removed the photograph of Tribble supplied by the Justine Clinic.
'Is this Rudi Hines?' Vail asked.
She looked at the photograph and shook her head. 'No, this is a man. Rudi Hines is a woman.'
Her answer stopped conversation for a moment. Vail looked at St Claire. 'Show her the other one,' he said. St Claire showed her the photo of Rene Hutchinson. She studied it for a moment and then slowly nodded. 'Yes, her hair's darker and much shorter, but that's Rudi.'
'Can we take a look at the billing office?'
'Of course.' She took a ring of keys out of a drawer and led them down a maze of hallways to a fairly large room with several desks and a bank of computers at the rear. The screens faced away from the door. Meyer walked straight back to them and stopped short.
'Christ, look at this,' he said. They all crowded around the screen and read the message:
Very Clever…
The prince who keeps the world in awe;
The judge whose dictates fix the law;
The rich, the poor, the great, the small,
Are levelled - death confounds them all.
Hydra
'I don't know what the hell it is, but it'll be in one of Rushman's books, that's for damn sure,' St Claire said.
'What's it mean?' Eve Wilonski asked. 'Who is Hydra?'
'Greek mythology, ma'am,' St Claire answered. 'Hydra was a demon with two heads. Every time Ulysses cut one of 'em off, she grew two more in its place.'
'Or maybe grew a new name whenever things got hot?' suggested Vail.
'Maybe,' agreed St Claire.
'He's telling us something, Harve. Everything he does sends a message - names, quotes, everything. He's taunting us.' Vail read it again and then a chill
rippled through him. He repeated the second line aloud: ' "The judge whose dictates fix the law." '
'Shoat?'
'What other judge could it be? I'll get Shock Johnson on the portable.'
St Claire turned back to Eve Wilonski. 'Tell you what the message really means, ma'am. It means we need an address on this here Rudi Hines ASAP,' he said.
Stenner parked the car in front of Venable's house and opened the door for her. As they approached the front door, he drew his gun. Venable was surprised. Stenner always seemed so totally in control, it was hard to imagine him armed. He took her gently by the arm, stepped in front of her at the door, and held out his hand for the key. She gave it to him and he unlocked the door, then swung it open with his foot. He moved cautiously into the foyer, then moved quickly and professionally through the first floor, checking the living room, kitchen, guest bedroom, and all the closets.
'We're clear down here,' he said. The outside guard was sitting on the terrace with his back to the door. He was wearing earphones and listening to a Walkman.
'I could have walked out there and pulled the chair out from under him, he wouldn't know the difference,' Stenner said, walking to the door of the terrace. 'I want him to stay in here with you while I check the second floor.'
He opened the door and tapped the house guard on the shoulder. The man pulled off the earphones.
He stood up and turned around.
His face wore a hideous grin.
It was a moment or two before Stenner, with a shock, recognized the grinning face of Aaron Stampler. By then it was too late.
'Welcome home,' Stampler hissed. The knife slashed the air as he swung it underhanded. It pierced Stenner just over his belt, its deadly point angled upward, slicing towards his heart. The two men stumbled back into the living room and crashed into the wall.
Gasping, Stenner grabbed Stampler's wrist to keep him from withdrawing the blade. Stampler, his face inches away from Stenner's, curled his lips in a leer. He shoved his other hand into Stenner's coat pocket, felt his car keys, and grabbed them.
As they burst into the room, Venable fell back against the wall. She gaped with horror when she saw the knife buried in Stenner's side. Then rage took over. She grabbed a heavy brass lamp from an end table and charged Stampler, swinging it like a club. It smashed the ridge of his jaw and split it open. Stenner slid from his grasp and fell at their feet, the knife still embedded in his side.