Conspiracy

109

“i don’t care who you are,” said the librarian. “I’m not going to allow you to take the hard drive.”

“What’s your fax number?” Lia said.

“Our fax?”

“I’ll have a subpoena faxed right to you.” The librarian frowned, then took another tack.

“If I let you have the hard drive, which I’m not saying I’m going to do, that means my patrons are out a computer,” she told Lia. “What am I going to tell them?”

“What if I got you a new hard drive?” said Lia.

“And you set it up? The network administrator spent two whole days getting one of our machines to work the last time we had a crash.”

“I guarantee we can do it faster,” said Lia.

The nearby fax machine rang and then began to print.

The librarian went over to the machine.

“How did you do that?” asked the librarian. “I thought you didn’t know our number.”

Lia shrugged. “I have friends in high places.”

“Let me call the town attorney and make sure this is legal.”

“Please do,” said Lia.

Two hours later, Lia cradled her sat phone to her ear, pretending to use it as Robert Gallo talked her through the installation pro cess. Gallo had already made a copy of the working data on the original drive; once Lia was ready, he downloaded a compressed version to the drive. As she was waiting for the files to reconstitute themselves, Lia handed off the original drive to a state trooper who had promised to take it to the airport, where a courier would pick it up and fly it to Crypto City.

“Done,” Lia told the Art Room as the library’s card catalog appeared on the screen. She hung up the phone and got up from the computer.

“You better go tell Chief Ball that you took the drive,” suggested Telach. “He’s bound to find out.”

“Should I ask him why Amanda ran the credit check?”

“Hold that back. Maybe there’s something on the drive that will make it obvious.”

“Gotcha.”

“Are you talking to me?” asked the librarian, who had come over without Lia noticing her.

“Just to myself,” said Lia.

“Sounded like some conversation.”

“You should hear when I disagree.”

“he didn’t say when he would be back. Gone a few days.

That was the message he left.”

“And he didn’t say where he was going?”

“Uh-uh.”

Lia stared at the Pine Plains police dispatcher, trying to figure out if the blank look on her face was real or phony. It was hard to tell.

The phone rang before Lia decided. The Pine Plains police dispatcher pulled her thick-framed eyeglasses up off the bridge of her nose, then turned and answered the phone, preening her frosted curls as she picked up the receiver. Lia felt as if she’d been dropped into the middle of a Mayberry RFD rerun on Nick at Nite.

“Pine Plains PD. Dispatch speaking… No, I’m afraid he’s not… Yes, Marge, I recognized your voice. I’m sure we could get one of the part-timers over to direct traffic when you have your bake sale. When is it?”

“Lia, can you talk?” asked Telach.

“Excuse me a second,” Lia said to the dispatcher. She took out her sat phone and walked out into the hallway.

“Marie?”

“The state police found Amanda Rauci’s car at the Rhinecliff train station, about a half hour from where you are,” said Telach. “They just called the Secret Service, and the liaison passed the information over to us. What’s up with Ball?”

“Doesn’t seem to be in.”

The dispatcher was just hanging up when Lia returned.

“This is a number where the chief can reach me,” said Lia, writing it on a pad. Anyone calling the number would be forwarded to her sat phone. “Can you give me directions to the train station?”

“Which one?”

“How many are there?”

“Well, if you’re going to New York, there’s Millerton and Poughkeepsie.”

“Actually, I want the Rhinecliff station,” said Lia. “Where do those trains go?”

“Oh, that’s an Amtrak station. That goes north. You can go south to New York from there, too, I guess, but it’s more expensive, and not as close as Millerton.” the rhinecliff train station was a small, quaint little stop within a stone’s throw of the Hudson River. It had a tiny parking lot at the side, tucked around a curve in the road.

Amanda Rauci’s car was parked in a spot close to the walk that led to the station entrance.

A tow truck was hooking up the car’s bumper when Lia arrived. A small knot of troopers stood near the entrance, talking baseball. Trent Madden, the Secret Service agent who was following up on the Forester case, was with them.

“What’s the story?” Lia asked.

“Yanks beat Boston, nineteen to three,” said one of the troopers.

“Real funny.”

“Rauci must’ve taken the train this morning,” said Madden. “Engine’s cold. Train goes north to Albany and Canada, or west through Buffalo, and south to New York City. We’re checking all the stations.”

“She got a really good spot,” said Lia, looking at the rest of the lot. There were places for only twenty cars in the gravel lot; the overflow filled the nearby street and a church parking lot across the way. “Must’ve been here before everyone else.”