The Book of Lies

71

If you really missed us that bad, you coulda just sent us a card,” the young nurse said to Naomi as he cut away the dead gray skin from the bullet wound in her shoulder.

“That’s funny,” Naomi replied, using her free hand to dial a number on her phone. “You should be on M*A*S*H.”

“What’s M*A*S*H?” the nurse asked.

Naomi looked up, staring at him. “Oh, God—you’re not even twenty, are you?”

The sharp ring of Naomi’s phone interrupted the exchange.

“Scotty?” she answered.

“Nope. Becky,” replied a woman with a cigarette-scarred voice. “Becky Alter.”

“I don’t know any Becky Alters.”

“From C3.”

“I don’t know what that is, either. Ow!” she hissed, pulling away from the nurse’s dabbing Q-tips.

“Sorry,” the nurse whispered. “It needs to be cleaned.”

“It can wait two minutes,” Naomi shot back, shooing the nurse out of the small curtained exam room. “Go Google M*A*S*H. It’ll make you smarter.”

“C3—Cyber Crimes Center,” Becky explained. “I do computer forensics here at ICE. I was at your birthday party.”

“Of course, of course,” Naomi said, eyeing her wet, open wound, which was now burning from whatever cleaning ointment the nurse had put on it. Naomi was nauseated just looking at it and took a seat on the gurney to steady her stomach. “You have dark hair.”

“I’m blond,” Becky said. “Don’t fret. I just came for free cake,” she added with all the sensitivity of someone who does computer forensics. “Leastways . . . I just finished picking through those files you asked for.”

“I asked for files?”

“The ones Scotty sent—through HUD—Service Point homeless records for a Calvin Harper: all the people he picked up during the last year.”

“No—of course,” she said, remembering the database entries from Cal’s laptop. “What took so long?”

“Long? Scotty just sent them last night. This is fast,” Becky pointed out. “So not to panic you, but there’s one record here I think you need to see. You sitting down?”

Naomi stood from the gurney. “Yeah.”

“Good. Because I think I figured out the real name of your so-called Prophet.”