Killer Move

CHAPTER TWENTY

I didn’t go far. After I’d made it onto the main road without being confronted by a cop car, I calmed down a little. I knew what I was doing was not smart, but also that it wasn’t a CNN-worthy Bronco debacle either. How was I to have known that the cops were on their way? Well, okay, because Karren had told me—but they didn’t know that (yet). And they should have called ahead, right? You can’t just assume people are sitting around with nothing better to do. I had business to attend to. I had a client to meet, a dentist’s appointment, a brand-building encounter group and astrology “fragfest” up in Bradenton. I had to do . . . whatever the fuck.

So I wasn’t home. So sue me.

I drove into downtown Sarasota and developed an idea on the way. It was a small idea, but it was the only one I could find, and some form of positive and direct action seemed like a good plan right now (and a great excuse for not being at home, too).

I parked on Felton Street and walked the extra block to the offices of Not Just a Beach. I could see through the big glass doors that someone was still behind the desk, but when I tried to open the door, it was locked. The girl looked up from her computer and shook her head with the god-given authority of receptionists everywhere.

We be shut. It de law.

I went through a mime show to indicate that I knew it was after six and they weren’t open, but that I was desirous of communicating with her anyhow—and not likely to give up any time soon. She took her time interpreting this, or maybe just wasn’t too smart. In the end she pressed a button and the door clicked.

“We’re closed,” she said primly as soon as I’d set foot inside.

“I know, and I’m only going to keep you a second. I’m Stephanie Moore’s husband.”

The girl upped her respect level by about twenty percent, Steph being senior editor of the magazine. “Oh, okay, hi.”

“I’ve had my phone crash on me. I’m supposed to be meeting Steph but I can’t remember where. She texted me the place, but I can’t access my calendar. Can’t reach her on the phone, either. She didn’t mention where she was headed this evening, anything like that?”

The receptionist diligently consulted various bits of paper strewn across her desk and stuck around her computer monitor. “Sorry, no.”

“Okay, last resort—you got a number for Sukey?”

This was something I’d tried to establish back at the house during my phase of searching the place, but the number wasn’t on Steph’s laptop.

“I’m not allowed to give out that information.”

“Of course.” I grabbed a pen and a slip of paper from her desk and started scribbling. “But this is my cell, okay? Will you do me a favor, e-mail or text Sukey that number, ask her to give me a call?”

I walked back onto the street. I wasn’t confident she’d do as I’d asked, and it probably wouldn’t make much difference. So what now?

As I walked back to the car, I caught sight of a bar sign in the distance and thought: That’s what now.

Krank’s was slammed with the after-work crowd and I didn’t bother to even try to get a seat in the air-conditioned interior, instead grabbing one of the tables on the terrace. With a beer on the way I tried Steph’s number for the three millionth time. Getting voice mail again had me gripping the phone about as hard as its tough little case could handle. I didn’t bother to add another message. I did, however, notice that my battery had taken a thrashing over the course of the day and was already down to half a charge. This gave me a twist of additional anxiety that I didn’t need. Though, after all, I could charge it when I went back to the house, right? It wasn’t like I was on the run or anything. I’d be home real soon. Exactly.

I also didn’t need the fact that three women sat at the next table and immediately started smoking their heads off. If you’ve never tried to give up cigarettes, then you don’t know what that shit is like. You can be months down the road, over the addiction and dealing only with the tendrils of habit: then one afternoon you see someone happily sucking away on a cancer stick and find yourself knocking down children and old people in your rush to buy a pack, dully knowing that this moment was always here in front of you, waiting for you to plod your way toward it. The guy behind the counter takes your money and moves on to the next customer, not realizing the momentous event that has occurred, the edifice of effort, internal dialogue, and self-denial that crumpled in his presence.

Maybe all the types of pain and disappointment we find in our lives are there just because we invite them, because we have the receptors ready and waiting.

Maybe I should just have a fucking smoke and be done with it.

I turned to the ladies. Got halfway to asking one of them if I could bum a cigarette. But didn’t.

I turned back to my own table, feeling no triumph, just a thin and vicious sense of lack. Luckily my beer arrived and I swallowed half of that instead. The other half followed quickly, so I got another on the way.

And so it went, and still Steph did not call.

An hour later I was starting my fourth beer and realizing this had better be the last. The sun had started to dip but the air was getting heavier. The terrace had cleared in the meantime. The smokers nearby had gone, too, which had helped my clarity somewhat—leading me to remember something Kevin had said at lunchtime. He’d said that physical access to my laptop would be the easiest explanation for everything that had happened; that, by implication, there was a person who could very easily have gained access to my passwords and/or account.

Stephanie. Of course.

The idea broke with the photographs. Sure, Stephanie could have put them on my laptop. She could even maybe have taken them in the first place.

But why? What would be the point of going nuclear on me over something I hadn’t done? David Warner engineering the event was inexplicable enough. Steph doing it was plain incredible, and without evidence . . . though it was hard to imagine how Warner would have had the opportunity to put the files on my computer, either. I didn’t understand enough about the tech to know how likely it was for someone to be able to dump files on my machine from without. That made me realize just how little I understood the capabilities and limits of the technologies to which I’d merrily handed up control of my life. In the old days identity meant your face, or your signature at the very least. Now it was a collection of passwords, each chosen with less thought than you’d use to name a pet. Know my passwords, be me—functionally, at least—and we are what we do or appear to have done.

I couldn’t believe I was even considering this about my own wife. The alcohol was making me tired and tetchy and miring me in anxiety that was uncomfortably like panic. There was no point sitting here any longer, not least as I had the car and was already over the limit. I called for the check and headed inside to the john.

As I walked back through the bar afterward I tried Steph’s number yet again and received the same lack of response. It was half past eight. As I cut the connection I abruptly made a decision. I was going to follow Karren White’s advice. I’d call the cops—saying I’d heard they wanted to speak to me. And when we met, I’d mention the fact I hadn’t heard from my wife all day. Their reaction—which I hoped would be low-key—might settle me a little.

I nodded to myself, glad to have made a decision, and reached for my wallet to find Deputy Hallam’s card. I happened to glance up, and saw a waiter placing a tray with my check on the table where I’d been sitting.

Behind him, on the other side of the street, I saw a man walking by.

It was David Warner.