Signwave (21 page)

Good thing I did—she parked her little Audi right in front of what looked like a giant log cabin, but I could see it wasn't any slapped-together build. The whole place looked like money—subtle money. It took me a few minutes just to circle it, and the stained-glass windows on the left side completely covered a tower of some kind. It was high enough to be a second story, but when I got around the back, I could tell it was an atrium. There was a greenhouse back there, too. No grow lights, so not a marijuana farm. I guessed the angle had been picked to grab the sun's rays for a few hours every day.

On the far side, a stand-alone garage, built of the same kind of logs. Cedar-shingled roof on it, too, just like the house.

I made my way back to the bike, pulled it upright, and walked it against what could be oncoming traffic for what I guessed was about a quarter-mile before I crossed the road and started it up.

After that, I was a man out for a ride. Headlight on, goggles in the saddlebag.

Franklin's truck was easy to spot, parked overlooking the ocean. No cop would even be curious about it—the hour was late, but the surf was foaming, and a man and a woman were inside, very close together.

“Did you get what you wanted?” MaryLou asked, on the drive back.

“Yes” is all I said. And I wasn't lying—all I wanted was to be able to find my way back, and that was so easy I wouldn't need the data recorder I wore like a wristwatch.

“When are we coming back?” Franklin asked.

“Soon,” I said, wondering how he could know that I'd need a ride again. Maybe MaryLou had told him what she'd figured out on her own, and he just spouted it out. Or he was on the scent, same as I was.

It didn't matter. Because what he said told me what I needed to know: They were going to go the distance with me. They didn't need to know what the job was to be in on it. Together.

—

D
olly usually slept right through when I got in very late, knowing if everything else failed Rascal would always be between her and any intruder.

Not that night. She wasn't in bed. Or even at her workstation. She was lying back in the oxblood leather recliner in what
she insisted on calling my “den.” I don't know if she'd been sleeping, but she was wide awake when I walked in. Rascal's sharp bark hadn't been a warning—he could detect me coming easy enough. He just wanted to register his unhappiness at being away from his usual post.

“Dell! You know where I was tonight?”

“No” is all I said. She was charged up about something, and I didn't want to get in the way of whatever it was.

“There was a meeting of the Town Council. An open meeting, I mean. I always go to those when something hasn't yet been decided—we have to bring a show of force to get them to
really
pay attention. Otherwise, it's the usual bunch of cranks who just want their three minutes at the microphone. It's so much worse now that the local cable channel actually carries whatever goes on. Now they think they're celebrities.

“But that's not what I need to tell you,” she went on, as if I'd interrupted her. “A man waited his turn. No one knew him. He was nicely dressed, suit and tie, not the way people do around here—not even the council members or the Mayor. He said he had an announcement to make concerning the whole town. Everyone went quiet.

“He said his name—I don't remember it, but it'll be on the record of the meeting—and he was the authorized spokesman for TrustUs, LLC. You know, the one that's buying up all the—”

“Yes.” I had to interrupt her then. Otherwise, she was going to talk around whatever she had to tell me, like an airplane circling in to find the best spot to land.

“Well, guess what? He said his corporation was willing to
donate
that land to the city.”

“Provided what?”

“That's what everyone wanted to know. I mean, if they were giving us the land, we'd have to make it part of the city to accept it. So there'd have to be power lines run, maybe even
water pipes. That could cost a lot of money, and the taxpayers would have to cover it. And how much taxes could a piece of land like that ever pay back?”

“You said everybody wanted to know. You mean, they all asked him questions?”

“They
wanted
to. But the president of the council, he said this wasn't on the agenda, so they'd treat it like they would any other announcement. If this corporation wanted to donate land, they'd have to put the offer in writing, so the council would have time to study it before they made a decision.”

“They could just say ‘yes' on their own?”

“Sure. That's what I meant about packing the place. If the council decides on anything like that, they always tell the newspaper, and that sorry rag will print it. Word for word, no questions asked. So, if people want to, say, oppose whatever the council signed off on, they have to show up. And be serious about it.”

“Sending a message? If the council doesn't change its mind, those people are going to get out the vote against them when they have to run again?”

“I guess so. But it's really just to show the flag. They don't all run for reelection at the same time, so knocking off one or two of them wouldn't give us a majority. But what people
can
do is recall any of them. Or all of them, if they put together a big enough voting bloc.”

“Recall?”

“That's the only way to get some things done. You need a certain number of signatures to put something on the ballot. People say that you need
twice
that number, to keep signatures from being challenged and struck off.”

“You can challenge them if they're not—what?—registered to vote?”

“Maybe. I don't know that much about it. But I'm going to find out.”

“Dolly, if they give the land away, how could that help them? You said the guy wasn't even from around here, so it's not like he wants to be the next mayor or—”

“I said nobody recognized him, Dell. That's not the same thing. The way this village is set out, you could live here for years and pretty much no one would know. Know you by
face
, I mean.”

“I need some sleep, honey.”

“I do, too. I was in your chair because I was reading. I knew, once I hit our bed, I'd be out like a light.”

I walked into our bedroom. It was all I could do—Dolly was ready to spend a half-hour on every sentence. Rascal gave me one of his looks on my way out.

—

B
y the time I got up, took a shower, and got dressed, I could see that if I wanted something to eat I was on my own.

Dolly was talking on her cell phone, two lines, telling one person to hold on, the other that she'd call them back, and sending out e-mails or texts using her tablet at the same time. She looked up just long enough to let me know she'd seen me.

Rascal didn't even go that far.

I never bring food into the basement, so I chewed on a piece of baguette I'd pulled off, and washed it down with some of Dolly's jungle juice. Taking my time about it—I had a lot to think about.

—

N
o invasion plan is risk-free.

An amateur never thinks about this, but even a professional knows you can't plan against random chance. Surprise always
adds a player to the game—the best you can do is eliminate as much of that as possible.

There hadn't been any dogs at that log cabin Rhonda Jayne Johnson had driven to. They wouldn't have had to be outside for me to know that: anyone who knew enough to train no-bark night dogs—Dobermans are still the best for that—would leave them loose, and
any
dog will bark inside his own house if he picks up on a stranger approaching.
Just like Benton's house
, I thought.

The blue Audi made the usual car noises—its door gave off a solid thump when it was closed. Rhonda Jayne Johnson had hammered some kind of metal-on-metal door knocker, too. So even if she wasn't a stranger—and she couldn't be, not from the confidence she'd shown driving there—all those sounds wouldn't have been ignored by any dogs inside.

No fence. The windows hadn't been shielded with one-way glass; some didn't even have the curtains drawn. Maybe there was the kind of alarm system the owner could arm when he went out, but that didn't matter—when I invaded, I wanted him to be at home.

I hadn't gotten close enough to the house to see if it had security lights. It
felt
like it didn't—I'm not sure how to explain that, but I trusted it. That house's security was its location. It was probably listed on the tax rolls, but on an unnamed street—not the kind of place anyone would stumble across by accident.

I hadn't seen any signs like the ones we had nailed to one-by-two stakes at the beginning of our driveway.

NO TRESPASSING

BEWARE OF DOGS

PROSELYTIZING PROHIBITED

But even those house-to-house missionaries who were constantly canvassing like it was some kind of competition to see
who could get the most doors slammed in their faces probably wouldn't visit a house they couldn't see from the road.

That didn't help me; I wasn't going to be knocking on the door.

I wasn't going to be smashing my way in, either—too much risk, in too many ways.

Real surveillance would take weeks. Did the guy inside have a wife or girlfriend? Roommates? A schedule he kept to? That and a hundred other things I'd want to know.

I didn't have so much time. What I did have was the certainty that he had to have some kind of Internet connection for what he did. A good one. He'd want to be off the grid for connecting to the
Undercurrents
server. Cable can be plenty fast around here, but all commercial cable goes through a shared pipe, so the speed would vary. Worse, no matter how much security you added, there was nothing to stop a cable company—or a DSL service—from data mining. Or some dummy could leave his laptop in his car. Not secure at either end.

But with all those trees, I couldn't see how he could be using his own satellite signal.

Wait!
stabbed its way into my mind. Before I could blink, I was back to checking for an overlook.

I went upstairs, hand-signaled to Dolly that I'd be using the Subaru. She made a “Go ahead” gesture.

—

“H
ey, Mr. Dell!”

“Franklin, didn't we make a deal about—”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot. ‘Dell,' right?”

“Right. I came out here because I thought you could help me with something.”

“Me? Sure. But I have to wait until I get off work. MaryLou's home—you want me to call her?”

“She can't help me, Franklin, not with this. I don't need something done, I need your knowledge.”

“
My
knowledge?” The huge man couldn't decide between surprise and pleasure, so he crammed them both into those two words.

“Yes. You know those giant trees, the ones that grow on the back of our property?”

“The Douglas firs?”

“If that's what they are.”

“If you mean those really tall ones, that's them. But they're not really fir trees—that's what Mr. Spyros taught me.”

“Okay,” I said quickly; I didn't want to learn everything Franklin knew about the damn things. “Good. Do they grow all around here?”

“Oh, sure, they do. There's no place near the coast that doesn't have them.”

“How tall can they grow?”

“Two hundred feet, easy.”

“Two hundred feet?”

“More,” he assured me. “It just depends on how long they've been standing.”

“And they could hold a lot of weight? Like, if a real heavy metal coil was wrapped around the branches, from the bottom up.”

“That wouldn't be so much weight. But it wouldn't matter, anyway. A tree like that, it could hold a few hundred pounds like it was nothing.”

“That's perfect, Franklin. I knew you'd be the one to ask.”

“Mr. Spyros—”

“You already gave me everything I needed,” I assured him.

—

D
riving back, I remembered Franklin's saying Marylou would be at home.

Maybe that was just what he called his rented cottage, but I didn't think so. Not anymore. When I finished designing my invasion plan, I'd need the both of them, anyway.

—

N
o matter how many ways I drew the diagram, it ended up the same—one chance was all I was going to get.

Still, not all that difficult…
if
I'd had the time to scout the terrain, check on in-and-outs, watch for patrols. But the time just wasn't there. I could do the math: Something was in this for Rhonda Jayne Johnson. Something more than a regular client, even a rich one.

Okay, so what? I could get her to tell me, but I couldn't just walk away with whatever she said, even if I believed every word. And if I made her dead, there'd be no more leaks to Benton, so he'd know something had gone wrong.

That was the last thing I wanted. I didn't want Benton worried; I wanted him relaxed. The more sure of himself he was, the less danger he'd be to Dolly.

It all came down to the man in the log house. He'd founded
Undercurrents
a long time ago, built it from a little blog to the most trusted news source in the whole area. What would make him risk losing all his work had built?

That last e-mail from Dolly to
Undercurrents
had been enough for him to call the whore, so he had to know she was interested in anything that came in on whatever Benton was planning. But maybe he didn't know she
was
a whore. Had she told him a fairy tale about a potential scoop? One she wanted to do, all by herself? Her own investigation—maybe even big enough for a Pulitzer?

No matter how anyone had sized her up,
ambitious
would be somewhere in their assessment.