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“You want me to pretend you’re living here?” Robin’s best friend spoke over measured chops as she cut up vegetables. Already soup stock bubbled on the stove, sending mouth-watering smells into the air.
Robin had arrived in Green Bay with a small bag of essentials and a plan to stay ahead of Wyman or anyone else who might have been looking for her. Now she had to decide how much to tell Shelly about what she’d done and what she intended to do. Involving her best friend in her crimes was wrong, so she figured the less Shelly knew, the better it would be for her if everything went sour.
“I want my mail to come here,” Robin told her. “If anyone asks, I’m doing real estate appraisals, so I have to travel a lot.”
“Why do you need to pretend to be in Green Bay when you aren’t?”
“Honestly, Shel, it’s better if you don’t know.”
Shelly folded her arms. “Does this have anything to do with the beautiful hunk who got off the plane with you and is now staying at the Holiday Inn?”
Robin gave the easy answer. “He’s part of it, yes.”
“I knew it!” Shelly gave her an enthusiastic hug. “Go wherever you need to, but I want a phone call every week. Whatever you and he are up to, someone needs to keep track of where you are.”
You won’t really know, Robin thought, but it’s nice that you care.
The rest of Robin’s visit was spent working out the details. Most of her things had been stored in the unit outside Cedar, but she’d left several boxes at the FedEx store. Once Shelly agreed to her proposal, Robin called and had them overnighted to Green Bay.
Having sworn off men after her divorce, Shelly now lived alone in a three-bedroom house. When the boxes arrived, Robin unpacked them in the guest room, taking what she would need for a couple of weeks on the road and leaving the rest to make it appear Shelly had a roommate.
Next they drove to a mall where Robin bought two cell phones, a tablet, and a laptop computer. When she paid with cash, Shelly’s brows twitched, but she didn’t say anything. Robin was satisfied when she tried the phone and the ID came up green bay wisconsin.
That night she called her brother to tell him she was moving in with Shelly until she could figure things out. Chris asked the questions she’d expected, but overall he sounded relieved. Robin made a date for lunch, promising to tell him all about the move.
After three days, Robin Parsons split into two people. Imaginary Robin stayed on in Shelly’s guest room. Real Robin left Wisconsin, traveling as Lynn Taylor, landscape photographer. Ms. Taylor traveled with her husband Richard, who was a metal artist. They carried little with them in the secondhand blue RAV4 they’d purchased, planning to buy what they needed along the way.
Cam had enjoyed his first time alone in a hotel, and he told Robin all the wonders he’d experienced, like room service and “really nice ladies” who made his bed. When they merged onto 94 South he asked, “Where are we going?”
“Indianapolis,” Robin replied. “We’re going to find out who our next target is.”
Used to each other’s company, they didn’t talk much on the drive. Robin stopped at places Cam liked for meals, which meant fast food. He didn’t like waiting to be served, and he liked the fact that food came packaged separately. He couldn’t abide it when segments of a meal ran together on his plate. Robin missed the finer side of dining and disliked the monotonous offerings of such places, but she told herself she could visit sit-down restaurants by herself once they were settled somewhere.
As long as it isn’t in a holding cell while we await our trial.
Em had advised staying in small, privately owned motels in order to avoid national data bases. Some of them accepted cash in payment, which left even less of a trail. When they stopped at the Woods Motel west of Indy, however, their stay required a credit card. “Been burned a few times,” the owner said.
Cam carried their overnight bags down the slightly musty-smelling hallway. They’d taken one room, and Robin was relieved to see there were double beds. Though she’d become used to having her former neighbor close by, sharing a bed was beyond what she was willing to endure for the sake of their cover.
Cam didn’t seem concerned. “Is there Wi-Fi?”
“The sign said there was.”
Going to the ancient wooden desk, he set the new computer on it and opened the case. The laptop hummed as it booted, and Cam located the signal, logged in, and dropped into his techno-world. He’d quickly become bored with “shrink-wrapped games,” which offer limited options for competition, but Robin explained that his online identities might lead Thomas Wyman to them. Somewhat reluctantly, Cam had given up his impressive history of high-scoring games and begun creating new avatars and building different worlds.
As the laptop flickered and phaser fire sounded, Robin staked her claim to the bed on the far side of the room and began setting out her things. To support their cover story, she’d bought a Pentax camera, and she practiced with it a little, taking shots of the room and the view out their window, a barren field with a few abandoned lawn chairs for interest. In her only year of college, she’d taken a couple of classes in photography and one in computer graphics, so she possessed enough surface knowledge to make her “I’m an artist” lie believable.
Uploading the pictures, she examined them on the screen of her tablet. They weren’t great art, but she liked the angles she’d chosen, which emphasized the room’s smallness and the field’s wasted expanse. Maybe she’d take online courses and learn how to set up better shots.
Yeah, right. Between kidnappings and running from the cops, I’ll have lots of time for snapping pictures.
***
The next day Robin left Cam immersed in Lightning War and drove into Indianapolis to meet Chris. Spring was not as far along here as in Georgia and Virginia, so she wore a sweater under her light jacket for extra warmth. She and her brother had agreed to meet for lunch at an Irish pub near Monument Circle. Having downloaded a parking app before leaving the motel, she easily found the spot she’d reserved for the car and walked toward the State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, a 284-foot limestone obelisk visible for some distance in downtown Indy. As she approached the street that encircled the monument, a carriage passed, the horses’ hooves clopping noisily on the pavement. Inside rode a young woman in a huge white dress, surrounded by attendants arrayed in shades of blue. Robin smiled as the bride waved enthusiastically to the people on the street who weren’t fortunate enough to be getting married on this cool but sunny spring day.
Marriage was a topic she didn’t often contemplate. Though Chris and Annika were happy, Shelly had found only heartache. Thoughts of marriage made Robin remember her mother, cowed by her husband’s ugly temper and tentative in everything she did. If that was what it took for a woman to have a husband, Robin thought she’d pass. If I ever find a prince, he’d better be a charming one. So far, no man she’d met qualified.
The pub was a block from the downtown circle. Entering, she saw Chris at a table to one side. “Hey, Sissy!” he called loudly enough to make everyone in the place turn to look at her. Robin shook her fist at her brother, bowed to the lunchtime crowd, and bumped her way through the customers to join him at the table.
First she asked about Annika and when she’d be finished with her deployment. Then they moved on to the subject of the dogs, who were more like children to the couple than pets. Chris went on for some time about their antics, and Robin laughed to hear him tell about the smaller dog, Bo, dominating the larger one, Terra, through sheer nerve.
When the conversation fell into a brief lull, she took a breath. Time to get down to business. “What are you working on now?”
He examined his hands. “A couple of things, actually.”
“Any interesting bad guys?”
Tilting his head to one side, he said, “Rumor says a certain senator has gone into rehab.”
“Huh,” she said blankly as the waiter set a basket of peanuts between them. “Must have hit rock bottom.”
“I got an interesting email from Jessica Quern, thanking me for my help.” Chris met her gaze. “Are you responsible for Buckram’s change of heart, Rob?”
She felt a thrill of pride. “Maybe.”
“What did you do?”
Expelling air out her nose, she tried to decide how much to tell. “Let’s just say I’ve found a way to apply pressure to people who misuse positions of trust.”
“People, as in more than one person?”
She held up two fingers. “Nobody’s been hurt. We—I give them a chance to straighten out their lives and incentive to do it.”
“Incentive.”
“That’s all you need to know, Chris. Anything more would put you in a bad position.”
“I see.” He’d never looked so serious. “What if I chose to be in that position?”
Their waiter returned, and Chris ordered the corned beef sandwich. Robin asked for a salad, and they each chose a different craft beer so they could exchange tastings. All the time she was thinking. Would her Jarhead brother agree with what she was doing, or would he demand she stop? Once the waiter left, she lowered her voice and said, “You’ve been working for two years to stop abuses in the system. You’ve had some success, but there are people you can’t get to. We—I mean, I can.”
Chris shook his head. “You’ve stumbled twice on the we/I thing, so I know you’re not working alone.”
“Okay. I have friends with similar goals. We work together.”
He lightened a question with a childhood rhyme. “Are your friends big and tough and hard to bluff?”
She thought about that. Cam was strong. Though not big, Em was certainly strong-minded. “One’s ex-FBI and the other is a martial arts expert.” Cam has to be learning something from all those video games.
Their beers arrived, and they compared, deciding they liked Robin’s Rebel Red better than the Pale Ale Chris had chosen. Once that was established, she got back to the point. “We have a lawyer on call too.”
Chris took a drink. “If you’re messing with corrupt people, Rob, you’re asking for trouble.”
“We’re all willing to fight for this.” Possibly not able, but certainly willing.
“I’d like to help,” he said after a moment, “but I don’t suppose I can do much from this chair.”
She grinned, relieved to be past the stage where he’d try ordering her to give it up. “But you can, Chris. You’ve worked hard to develop sources, so you know who breaks the law and how they get away with it. Give us their names and information about what crimes you suspect them of, and we’ll go after them.”
The manager came by with the inevitable question: “Is everything tasting good?” Chris was thinking so hard he seemed unaware of the interruption, but Robin answered for both of them, and the man moved off.
“What do you say?” she prompted. “Do you have any cheaters on your radar?”
Chris chuckled grimly. “That list is endless. It’s not a war you’ll ever win.”
“So we strike where we can.” She leaned toward him. “I know you hated what Mark used to make us do. This could take away a little of the shame, a little of the guilt. I need to do it, and I think you do too.”
“You can’t go off like some comic book hero and fix the world, Rob. It could get you in trouble with the law for sure, and it might even get you killed.”
“Don’t you think we haven’t talked about it for hours and hours, Chris? We know what we’re doing, and we’re going to do it. The question is are we going to do it with or without you.”
He looked at her for a long time before he spoke again. “There’s this judge who abuses her position.”
Robin laid her hands on the cool, smooth table surface. “Tell me about it.”
“Her name is Beverly Comdon, she’s a canned vegetable heiress from Louisiana, and she’s creepy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Judge Comdon takes a special interest in certain young men who come into her court, usually first-time offenders accused of a serious but not necessarily heinous crime.”
“Such as?”
“Wrecking a car while intoxicated. Injuring someone in a fight. Sex with an under-age girl.”
“Crimes where the judge has leeway in deciding punishment.”
“Right. Say a guy gets drunk and rapes an equally drunk co-ed at a frat party.” Chris shrugged. “That’s a rotten thing to do, and in today’s climate of non-tolerance of the whole boys-will-be-boys argument, he could be punished to the full extent of the law. But hey, he was drunk too, so the judge offers him a deal. He can redeem himself by completing her program, Rehabilitate Louisiana. That’s where the judge takes advantage of the accused.”
“How?” The look on his face stopped her. “They have to—?”
“They don’t have to. They can choose to do prison time and come out with a felony record.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Did Mark ever make you help him get women?”
The memory hit her like an ice cube in the heart. “Twice that I remember. I was supposed to cry about my dead mother.”
“He made me do that a lot, at least until I got too old to get away with it.” Chris fiddled with his wedding ring. “This woman does something similar, pulling her victims in like a spider in a web.”
“How?”
“Rehabilitate Louisiana is supposed to be like community service. Men are ‘confined’ to the judge’s estate, where they do tasks that teach them ‘work skills.’” He made imaginary quotation marks. “From what I gather, they live high on the hog but serve as the judge’s boy-toys.”
“Don’t people suspect this is going on?”
He fiddled with a lever on the side of his chair. “The men aren’t objecting, and as for those involved, professionals tend to protect their own. Corruption in the ranks makes them all look bad.”
“Yes, I ran into that with—I know what you mean.”
Meeting Robin’s eyes to let her know he saw her equivocation, Chris took a drink of his beer. “I first read the accusation on a blog online, and when I looked at the judge’s candidates for rehabilitation—well, you’ll get it when you see them.”
Robin leaned back in her chair. “She sounds like a possible KNP target.”
“And what does KNP stand for?”
She tilted her head to one side. “Maybe once we nail this judge, I’ll tell you.”
***
When she got back to the motel room, Robin began looking at internet articles about Beverly Comdon. She’d occupied the bench in her Louisiana parish for thirty-two years, and her website claimed “Judge Bev” worked to bring “strong, law-based justice” to the people. That got her re-elected term after term.
Robin read an opposing opinion on-line. In a post titled About a Certain Judge, an angry writer accused “a so-called” lady named Bev of being a cougar. Despite misspellings and almost non-existent punctuation, the piece resonated with truth, claiming that Rehabilitate Louisiana needed to be investigated. Since the site operated under a pseudonym and the comment section was disabled, she was unable to learn the blogger’s identity.
The land-line phone on the desk beside her rang, making Robin jump. Guessing it was one of those annoying calls where the management asks if the room is satisfactory, she picked up the receiver and responded with a curt, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Taylor?” The voice was light, the r’s elided. “I’m calling about a crime you recently committed.”
Robin’s throat closed like a clenched fist. “Excuse me?”
“I am aware of what you did in Richmond.”
Her lungs seemed to be filling with cement. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We need to meet face to face.”
“Um, I don’t see any reason to—”
“I’m downtown,” the caller interrupted, and something about the o’s said he wasn’t a native speaker of English. “I am sitting on the steps of the monument and facing Starbucks. I’ll wait half an hour. Then I will call the local police and tell them everything I know.”
She gripped the receiver so hard her hand hurt. “I don’t have a clue what—”
“Talk to me or to the police, Mrs. Taylor. Discuss it with your husband if you like, but don’t take too long.”
“Listen, I don’t know—”
“I’m wearing an orange leather jacket.” The call ended.
She stood holding the handset for some time. Should they run? Though her imagination conjured a statewide manhunt, she decided no. If the caller wanted justice, he’d have told the police where they were. He’d called her because he wanted money.
She set the phone in place. “Cam, I need to go back downtown.”
For once he sensed the tension in her voice. “Should I come?”
It was a difficult question. He was big enough to scare the man away, strong enough to fight if the need arose. Still, if the police were waiting to arrest her, she wanted Cam to have a chance to escape.
“Stay here. I’ll call if I need you.”
She put on her jacket and gloves slowly, trying to decide what to do. Demanding a meeting didn’t feel like something a cop would do, but if this guy knew about the KNP, why hadn’t he called the police? Would he offer the chance to turn themselves in? That didn’t feel right. It had to be money he was after.
As she left the room, Robin picked up the bag that held their remaining cash. If she had to, she’d give the mysterious caller all of it, come back for Cam, and get out of Indy. She checked to make sure she had her room key. Cam was already focused on his game again.
Be ready to run if I call. She didn’t say it aloud. She just closed the cheap wooden door with a scrape.
