THE DRIVE SOUTH was exhilarating. Amelia knew that she should have called first, but the sky had cleared completely and it was a perfect day. She had Roger’s car, an apple red Lexus. On certain days, in certain moods, on certain streets, it made her feel like Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road. She passed through Bath and Hinckley, through Massillon, Zoar, and New Philadelphia. The trees were aflame with color, the air held a hint of woodsmoke and apples. Fall was in full, glorious burn in northeastern Ohio.
By the time she arrived in Walden, just west of Sugarcreek, she was hungry. She found a spot on Route 36 called Emma’s. The waitress told her the lunch specials: country meat loaf, fried Lake Erie perch, and spaghetti with meat sauce. And that they were out of the perch. Amelia glanced around and saw absolutely none of the customers eating the meat loaf.
‘I’ll have the spaghetti,’ she said. ‘And coffee.’
The waitress retreated to the kitchen just as a blue van pulled into the parking lot across the street from the restaurant.
‘Well, first of all, this is encrypted. See all this information at the top?’
Amelia nodded. She had handed the memory stick to the taller of the two young men she had found huddling over a computer terminal at Cybernauts, Inc., a disheveled storefront computer store on Gulliver Street, next to the one and only barber shop in downtown Walden, Ohio. The librarian at the Walden Community Library had told her that Edward Pankow had not worked there in a few months, that he had struck out on his own and started a telecommunications company.
Amelia, for some reason, had expected a high-tech office with a dozen employees scurrying about on expensive carpeting. When she stepped through the door and saw that the ‘cybernauts’ were really a couple of grunge rockers in their early twenties, she relaxed. She’d find out what she wanted to know.
‘This is the routing information,’ Eddie continued, clearing his long, dirty-blond hair from his eyes, pointing to his twenty-one-inch monitor. ‘As in, these are the locations of all the computers this had to go through to get to yours. I can tell you right now, this did not come from someone on World Online.’
‘We can tell you that,’ Andy Bencek said. He was the shorter one, the dark-haired one, the one standing inches away from Amelia.
‘Okay,’ Amelia said, barely hanging on to the thread. ‘But is there any way you can tell me what it says? Is there any way to, well, decode it?’
‘Dr Bencek here is our resident encryption expert,’ Eddie said, standing up, gesturing toward Andy, giving up the chair.
‘Is that right?’ Amelia said with a smile.
Andy sat down, hit a few keys, and brought the encoded message onto the screen in what may have been twenty-four-point type. ‘Initial analysis, Dr Pankow?’ he asked.
Eddie leaned in, looking over Andy’s shoulder. ‘I’d say it was a jpeg, Dr Bencek.’
‘Watch and learn.’ Andy tapped a few keys.
Amelia looked at the screen and saw it slowly reveal, from top to bottom, a photograph of a piece of paper – specifically, the bottom half of a torn sheet of paper from a legal pad. On it was a poem written in a pretty handwriting, a woman’s handwriting, that was for sure. For a moment it looked like calligraphy, but Amelia looked more closely and saw that it was just that the woman’s writing was nearly perfect – fluid, delicate, yet still confident and forthright. A young woman’s handwriting, Amelia thought.
She did not recognize the poem, but then again, her know ledge of poetry was limited to what she had been made to sit through in high school English. But there was something about the tone of the brief verse, something so sad, it filled her for the moment with a liquid sorrow. She thought of how Maddie dealt with the world, her daughter’s quiet, gentle nature.
On the other hand, if this was a love poem from Shelley Roth to her husband . . .
‘Mystery solved,’ Andy said as he turned to his partner and high-fived him.
‘The doctor is in,’ Eddie replied, fiving him back.
‘Well,’ Amelia began, ‘do either of you recognize this poem?’
The two young men looked at each other, then at the screen, then at the floor, then out the windows, as if they had just been cornered by a hostile English teacher. ‘No.’
‘Okay,’ Amelia said. ‘No problem.’
Eddie looked at his watch. ‘Look, we have to do a setup over the board of elections, but we can Google this for you when you get back.’
‘How long will that be?’
‘Maybe an hour or so.’
Amelia didn’t want to wait. ‘Can you call me with that information later?’
‘Sure,’ Eddie said. ‘If you give us your email addy, we can also get you the names of the other people who received this email if you like.’
‘You’d do that for me?’
The co-owners of Cybernauts, Inc., Edward James Pankow and Andrew Martin Bencek, looked at each other, at the computer screen, then at Amelia.
They nodded solemnly.
The only reason Eddie Pankow noticed the blue van was because he was trying to buy one. Cheap. And this one had potential. It looked around ten years old, clean but not perfect. When it rolled to a stop out front, about five minutes after the lady with the poetic e-mail had left the store, he could see a few fair-sized rust spots, and that meant if the van was for sale, there was bargaining room.
But while the van was cool, the guy who got out of it and stepped in front of the store was another story altogether. Tall, dark coat, tinted glasses. He had his hands in his pockets and stood there looking at the window display for what had to be ten minutes. The only things in the display were some empty, sun-faded boxes of Halo and Grand Theft Auto, along with a couple of outdated video cards arranged on some cheesy red velvet. Yet the man stood there and stared at the stuff for the longest time.
Eddie was just about to go get his partner and get his take on the lurker when something totally unexpected happened. Davey and Clete stopped in. Davey and Clete Sutar were twins, both Ohio state troopers, both standing around six two, both weighing in around two ten of muscle, gristle, and attitude. They were Eddie’s first cousins and Eddie loved it when they stopped by. It always gave the place an air of security.
After the usual family small talk, Clete said they needed a couple of patch cords for the computer in their cruiser. Luckily, the X-650s were in stock. ‘You want the gold ends?’ Eddie asked, rhetorically.
Clete gave him his patented Waddayathink? look. Eddie smiled, stepped into the back to get their order. When he returned to the front of the store he was greeted with a flash of sunlight, sunlight thrown through the front window, the unobstructed front window, which meant—
Eddie looked.
The man in the overcoat was gone. So was the van.
Shit, Eddie thought. Another potential love chariot gone down the road. He bagged the patch cords and tossed the bag to Davey, the slightly bigger of the two huge police officers.
‘On the house, gents,’ Eddie said. ‘Stop by anytime.’
Amelia sat at her kitchen table and looked at the printout of the email she had gotten from Eddie and Andy. In the message they said they would do a search for the lines of the poem, and call her as soon as they had something.
Five names and e-mail addresses.
Four of them were complete strangers.
| Benjamin Matthew Crane | bcranemd@wol.com |
| John Angelino | praise@wol.com |
| Geoffrey Coldicott | hardman@ttk.net |
| Jennifer Schumann | jenny5@wol.com |
| Roger St John | ras@wol.com |
What did Roger have to do with these people? she wondered.
Was this some kind of computer mailing list he was on?
Why was it all so hush-hush secretive?
And who the hell was Jennifer Schumann?