Fear itself

7

In her seven years with the Bureau, Linda Abruzzi had worked more than her share of shit jobs and shuffled more than her share of paper-federal employment background checks, interstate car theft investigations that involved comparing VIN numbers on computer printouts that were longer than she was tall, follow-the-money RICO probes-but nothing as soul-deadeningly, eye-strainingly, sleep-inducingly boring as going through fourteen file boxes of sloppily photostatted bank records.

Her initial inclination had been to blow it off. She’d finger-walked through the first few boxes, jotted down a few code numbers at random, then buzzed Miss Pool and asked her if she could come up with a number for the Chicago PD’s homicide division.

“I’ll be right in,” was the somewhat puzzling response.

“No, I just need-”

A moment later, Miss Pool appeared in Linda’s doorway. She had taken off her suit jacket; she was wearing a sleeveless black jersey under it. Good upper arms for a woman her age, thought Linda; no wobble-she must work out.

“You didn’t have to get up-I only wanted a phone number.”

“I know, hon-but don’t you want to finish going through those boxes first?”

“Why would I want to do that? You know as well as I do it’s busywork.”

“Because Maheu obviously doesn’t want you to.”

“Now you’ve lost me entirely,” said Linda. “Why doesn’t Maheu want me to go through the records he asked me to go through?”

“Because he doesn’t want you to find something.”

“But there’s nothing there to find!”

“Oh?” said Pool mysteriously, raising her left hand with a flourish and tapping the rather masculine onyx band she wore on her ring finger before going back to her desk.

“Oh.” A ringer-of course. Pool had just warned her that neither Maheu nor the counterspooks were above planting a deliberately doctored record somewhere in the files. Something so obvious that a diligent investigator could not have missed it, and so suspicious that only a double agent would have failed to report it.

Linda had ended up working on the floor all day-it was easier than hauling the boxes onto the desk-and by quitting time she had pains shooting up her legs to her butt, and her legs were so stiff she had to haul herself up using the corner of the desk for leverage. Miss Pool, who’d popped her head into the doorway to say good night, hurried over to help her.

“Don’t let the bastards wear you down,” whispered Pool, who proved to be even stronger than Linda had suspected, as she helped Linda to her chair.

“Never,” Linda said, swiveling her chair around to face her computer, intending to log back on to phobia.com-she was on her own time now.

Pool shook her head regretfully. “Sorry, no overtime.”

“I won’t put in for it.”

“Maheu wants me to log your hours. I’d fudge it, but your ID logs you in and out every time you go through a door. Then there are the gate logs and the-”

“It’s okay, I understand. And thanks for the tip about the, you know…” Linda tapped her own bare ring finger.

“Don’t mention it.”

“No, I-”

“I mean that literally,” said Pool. “Don’t mention it.”

The drive back to Georgetown was a typical Beltway nightmare. At the 66/495 maze, an SUV cut over into Linda’s lane, nearly clipping the Geo’s front bumper, and when she hit the horn, the driver gave her the finger. Linda thought about flashing her shield at him, just to give him a scare, then remembered that the days when you could cow somebody with a badge were long gone-nowadays you had to have a weapon to back it up.

Not that she would have drawn her weapon on a civilian over a traffic dispute even if she had been packing. But Linda had learned over the years that being armed changed the way a woman, especially a small woman, thought about herself in relation to the world. And now that she was no longer strong enough or steady enough on her feet to make use of the martial arts training she’d received at the Academy, it seemed to Linda that the Bureau should have insisted she carry a gun, at least until or unless she developed any optical or cognitive symptoms.

But there was no sense letting her mind wander down that path, Linda reminded herself. The FBI wasn’t fair, the disease wasn’t fair, and life wasn’t fair-big hairy deal, film at eleven. Better to concentrate on her job. Because she still had a job to do, an important one-the only hang-up was that until God in his infinite fucking wisdom decided to get Maheu off her ass, she’d have to do it on her own time.

The Georgetown brownstone was dark when Linda got home, which was not unusual: Jim and Gloria Gee were both attorneys, dinkies (double income, no kids) who dined out more often than in. Gloria had left a note for Linda-”dinner and a movie, back late”-on the kitchen table, along with the classifieds, which she had thoughtfully opened to the apartment rentals. Not a particularly subtle hint, thought Linda-somehow things had gone from the stay-as-long-as-you-need-to stage to the don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass-on-your-way-out stage without any intermediary steps.

Linda glanced through the listings while her pot pie nuked, but without much hope. She already knew what she’d find in her price range-diddly-and wondered again whether she ought to take Pender up on the offer he’d made toward the end of the party last night (Linda hadn’t split early after all) of a spare room in the old house above the canal. Be nice and peaceful out there-unless of course Pender had ulterior motives. Then she looked down at herself and laughed. Yeah, right-you’re a fucking femme fatale. It’s the ankle braces-they drive men wild.

After dinner Linda went into the living room and logged on to the Gees’ computer, set up a phony Netscape user profile for an alter ego, then accessed phobia.com, the PWSPD Association web site, and signed into the chat room, selecting a user name of Skairdykat and a password of boo. The chat room counter went from 0 to 1-Linda was alone. She clicked onto the archives, read back a few weeks until she had the feel of the lingo, then began typing her first entry into the dialogue box:

Hi everybody. Skairdykat here. Pleez dont flame me if I screw up, I’ve never done this before. Mostly cuz I never saw a chat room I wanted to join before. But reading you guys stories is like reading about my own life. It feels like coming home. Anyway, heres my story: I am…

(No need to narrow the age or sex down yet; if he bites, we can set up a meeting and have our choice of decoys in place.)

single, and I have been deathly afraid of…

(Might as well use the snakes-it’ll sound more believable than if you make something up.)

snakes since as long as I can remember. Thats ophidiophobia, as most of you probably know. The worst part is, I live…

(Keep it vague-if you get any nibbles, you can improvise something later.)

by myself, and sometimes I get so obsessed there might be a snake outside I cant even bring myself to leave the house. I am eager to chat with and maybe someday meet someone who knows how I feel. So if anybody…

(How to put this? Don’t want to be too obvious, but if the killer is using the PWSPD web site for trolling, he’s going to want to take it private as soon as possible.)

wants to contact me directly, my e-mail address is skairdykat@netscape.com….

(Anything else? Not yet. After all, you’re trolling, too. Graceful exit.)

Anyway, thanks for being there, all of you brave PWSPDs. Hope to hear from somebody soon. TT4N, Skairdy

After reading her entry over and making a few minor corrections, Linda positioned the cursor on the SUBMIT box, took a deep breath, then with a single click of her mouse turned poor Skairdy into a piece of bait dangling from a hook somewhere in cyberspace.