Hard as Nails

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Kurtz's plan was to take the Pinto, check out Cloud Nine, and get back to downtown Neola before Rigby King finished her schmoozing with the local sheriff's department. But she was sitting in the car when he walked back to the downtown block where he'd left it.

Shit, he thought. "Hey, Boo," he said. It was an old joke and he'd almost—not quite—forgotten the origin of it back at Father Baker's Friday Movie Night.

"Hey, Boo," she said back. She didn't sound happy. "You find your talkative drunks?"

"Yeah," said Kurtz. "I thought you needed at least ninety minutes to break the ice with your local cops."

"I could've spent ninety days here and they weren't going to tell me anything," said Rigby. "They wouldn't even acknowledge that your goddamned amusement park ever existed. To listen to the Sheriff and his deputies, they never heard of Major O'Toole and barely've heard about his company that seems to rule the roost here."

"Which means that they're all on the Major's payroll," said Kurtz.

Rigby shrugged. "That's hard to believe, but that's what it sounds like. Unless they're all just cretinous small-town cowturds too stupid and too suspicious of an outside police officer to tell the truth."

"Why would they be suspicious of a B.P.D. detective?"

"Well, no peace officer likes some wiseass coming in from the outside—but I'm not some FBI puke trying to take over some local investigation. I just told them the truth—that we're investigating the shooting of Major O'Toole's niece up in Buffalo and I came down here on my day off to pick up any loose information."

"But they didn't have any loose information," said Kurtz.

"They were tight as a proctologist's dog's asshole."

Kurtz thought about that for a second.

"So," said Rigby, "you find out where your Cloud Nine is?"

"Yeah," Kurtz said. He was trying to figure out some way he could convince her to stay behind while he went up there. He couldn't. He put the Pinto in gear and headed out of town.

They'd just crossed the Allegheny River marking the south edge of town when Kurtz's phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"Joe," said Arlene, "someone just signed on to Peg O'Toole's account using her computer."

"Just a second," said Kurtz. He pulled the car into a turnout and got out. "Go ahead."

"Someone signed on from her computer at the Justice Center."

"Are you at the office?"

"No, home. But I'd set the software to copy me at both machines."

"Did you get O'Toole's password?"

"Sure. But whoever signed on using her machine did so to delete all of her e-mail."

"Did he have time to do it?"

"No. I copied it all to my hard drive before he deleted it. I think he took time to check what was there first."

"Good," said Kurtz. "Why would whoever this is use her machine to sign on for her e-mail if he had the password? Why not do it and erase her mail from his own computer?"

"I don't think whoever it was had the password, Joe. I think he—I don't think it's a woman, do you? — I think he used some software to hack it on her machine and signed on immediately."

"It's Sunday," said Kurtz. "The offices would be closed there. It makes sense. What about the e-mails?"

"She only saved a week's worth at a time," said Arlene, "and they're all parole business stuff, except for one letter to her boyfriend."

"Brian Kennedy?"

"Yes. It was e-mailed to his security company e-mail address in New York, and was time-stamped about ten minutes before your appointment with her."

"What do they say? His and hers?"

"She only saved her own mail to file, Joe. Do you want me to fax you a copy?"

"I'm busy now." He had taken several paces away from the Pinto, and now he looked back to where Rigby was frowning at him from the passenger seat. "Just tell me."

"Her e-mail just said, and I quote—'Brian, I understand your reasons for asking me to wait, but I'm going to look into this lead this afternoon. If you come on Friday as usual, I'll tell you all about it then. Love, Peg. "

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"And she sent it just before I met with her?"

"Ten minutes before, according to the time stamp."

"Then she must have been leaving work early that afternoon for a reason. Nothing else in the mail that we can use?"

"Nothing." There was the hiss and crackle of cell static. Then Arlene said, "Anything else you want me to do today, Joe?"

"Yeah. Track down the home address and phone number of the former director of the Rochester nuthouse. I want to call him or talk to him in person."

"All right Are you in town now? The connection's lousy."

"No, I'm on the road for a few more hours. I'll call you when I get back to the office. Good work."

He folded the phone and got back in behind the wheel.

"Your stockbroker?" said Rigby.

"Yeah. He thinks I should sell when the market opens tomorrow. Dump everything."

"Always a good idea," said the cop.

They drove a mile beyond the river, turned left on a county road for three-fourths of a mile, turned right onto an unmarked gravel road, and then turned left again onto two strips of dirt that ran steeply uphill.

"Are you sure you know where you're going, Joe?"

Kurtz concentrated on keeping the Pinto moving uphill through the trees, around occasional bends that gave them glimpses of the valley, river, and distant town, and then south around the mountain until the dirt track ended at an old wooden roadblock.

"End of the line," said Rigby.

"This is how old Adam described it," said Kurtz.

"Old Adam?"

"Never mind." Kurtz got out of the car, looked uphill toward where the overgrown remnants of the two-rut road continued, and began walking slowly uphill. Various faded signs on the barricade announced private land and warned against trespassing. He went around behind the Pinto, pulled a lumpy old nylon backpack from the trunk, and walked past the barricade.

"You're shitting me," called Rigby from beside the car. "Joe Kurtz is going for a hike?"

"Stay in the car if you want," called Kurtz. "I'm just going to walk up here a bit and see if I can see anything."

"Stay here and miss seeing Joe Kurtz go for a hike?" said Rigby, jogging uphill to catch up. "No way in hell."

Shit, thought Kurtz, and not for the first time that day.

They followed the dirt track two hundred yards or so up the hill through the bare and blowing trees until they were stopped by a fence. No old and rotting wood barricade here—the fence was nine feet tall, made of mesh-link steel, and had rows of unrusted concertina razor-wire atop it. Here the yellow no-trespassing signs were new and plastic and warned that the owners were authorized to use deadly force to repel trespassers.

"Authorized by who?" said Rigby, panting slightly.

Kurtz took a short-handled pair of wire cutters from the pack.

"Whoa!" said Rigby. "You're not going to do this."

Kurtz answered by testing to make sure the fence wasn't electrified and then snipping a three-foot-high line of links. He began working horizontally.

"God damn it, Joe. You're going to get us both arrested. Hell, I should arrest you. You're probably packing, too."

He was. He still had the.38 in his belt at the back, under his leather jacket.

"Go on back to the car, Rigby. I'll just be a few minutes. I just want to look at this place. You said yourself that I'm not a thief."

"No," said Rigby. "You're a damned idiot. You didn't meet with the sheriff and his boys back there. This is not a friendly town, Joe. We don't want to go to their jail."

"They won't arrest a cop," said Kurtz. He finished with the horizontal cut and bent the little door of heavy wire inward. It didn't want to bend, but eventually it opened wide enough that he could squeeze through if he tossed the pack in first and went in on his knees.

"Arrest me?" said Rigby, crouching behind him as he went through. "I'm worried that they'll shoot me." She took the 9mm Sig Sauer from her belt, worked the action, made sure a round was in the chamber, checked that the safety was on, and set the weapon back in its holster. She crouched, duckwalked through the opening as Kurtz held the wire back from the inside, and rose next to him.

"Promise me we'll make it fast."

"I promise," said Kurtz.

Above the fence they headed north along the edge of the woods for fifty yards or so, found the original access road—now overgrown and blocked here and there by fallen trees—and followed it higher into the forest.

Kurtz's headache pounded with every step and even when he paused to rest, the pulse of pain crashed with every heartbeat. The hurt in his skull clouded his vision and literally pressed against the back of his eyes.

"Joe, you okay?"

"What?" He turned and looked at Rigby through the pounding.

"You all right? You look sort of pale."

"I'm fine." He looked around This damned hill was turning into a mountain. The trees here were some sort of pine that grew too close together, trunks as branchless as telephone poles for their first fifty vertical feet or so, and the mass of them shut out the sky. The clouds were low and dark and seemed to be scuttling by just above the tops of those trees. It couldn't be much later than noon, but it felt like evening.

"There!" cried Rigby.

He had to follow her pointing hand before he saw it.

Above the bare trunks of the deciduous trees up the hill and just visible through the wind-tossed branches, rose the semicircle of a Ferris wheel minus most of its upper cars.