A Murder of Crows (25 page)

But no,
he thought.
I have to be there. It wouldn't be right if I wasn't there.

Then he asked himself:
But how?

He knew that the Secret Service agents were already securing the
church.
Who had cleanup duties on the church?
he wondered. Then he knew that it wouldn't matter who was scheduled. It would be left to the head supervisor and his assistant, both of whom had clearance to go anywhere on campus.

“But if only one of them showed up to clean before the ceremony? What would they do then? Cleaning the church was usually a four-man job. But if only one showed up . . .”

He considered that for a moment. He went to the cupboard and pulled out a pack of animal crackers. He liked animal crackers, although when he bought them in the grocery store he always had to pretend they were for his nephew—even though the girl who checked out his groceries had known him since high school and probably knew he didn't have a nephew.

He stacked together two tigers and bit their heads off and felt better. He took his box of animal crackers over to his computer and turned it on. He had a momentary tug to go to his favourite porn sites but he resisted.

He opened his PROMPTOR account and waited to get the all-clear signal. Once PROMPTOR announced that he was anonymous he searched for an address for the head supervisor and to his surprise he found it under the Rotary Club listing for the town.

Twenty minutes later he was standing outside a grey clapboard house with a rusted boat trailer—but no boat—on the front lawn.

He looked up and down the patchwork street of tiny houses, then, not seeing anyone, walked up the cracked paving stones to the front door and pressed the button.

The supervisor answered the door in his bathrobe and boxers. Hair sprouted from his ears, his pits and over the top of his wife-beater T-shirt.

“Who are you and whaddaya want?”

Walter didn't know for sure until the man spoke that he was going to kill him, but his tone of voice and not even knowing who Walter was after all these years, and then there was all that hair—well, it was just so disgusting.

“HOW CAN IT HURT?” DECKER SHOUTED
.

“Some kid mutters something about a piece of shit and all of a sudden he's the access to—”

“Look at the essay he wrote. The kid was a fucking scientist. The thing interested him as a scientist. So he kept notes. Times and places. Just get the records of which janitor cleaned that restroom and cross-reference them with the appearances of the piece of shit.”

“Why? Is this more of that outsider stuff?”

Decker stared at her. “You called it something else.”

“What are you—”

“An anchor—something.”

Yslan sighed then said, “It's a Catholic thing—an anchorite.”

“What's an—”

There was a knock at the door.

“Yes,” Yslan said without looking to the door.

Mr. T came in and handed Yslan an elaborate security pass.

“I already have a pass.”

“Not for the church service you don't. Everyone who's going gets a new pass.” He turned and left.

Yslan held the pass up to the light. Even from a distance Decker could see the intricate metal threads in the plastic and the large hologram imprint on the front. Decker didn't know much about such things, but he assumed it cost a minor fortune to produce these gizmos.

“Well, Special Agent Yslan Hicks, you do get invited to the finest of parties,” Decker said.

“Yeah, I'm a real . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she shot Decker a look.

He nodded.

“I'm an insider, right?”

“Right.”

“And he's an outsider—
l'étranger
.”

Decker nodded again and waited for her to piece it together.

Finally she said, “And he'll try to get in, won't he?”

“If I was an outsider I would.”

“Get into the church to see the funeral!” She swore softly under her breath, then said, “Give me the kid's notes and I'll meet you in the provost's office in half an hour.”

* * *

While Decker waited for the half hour to pass he googled “anchorite”—and what he read shocked him.

DECKER ARRIVED ON THE DOT IN THE PROVOST'S OFFICE AND
immediately didn't like what he saw.

Harrison was clearly in charge of the room. Yslan had been relegated to one side.

And they both were scowling.

“What's—”

“Wrong?” Harrison demanded.

“Yeah, I guess that's my question.”

“Well a few things, Mr. Roberts. The first is that apparently the janitorial staff at the university regularly sign in for one another on those time sheets. Second, there are nineteen listed janitors, but there are also thirty subs who come and go.”

“So how many of them were potentially on call on the day of the explosion?”

“Almost fifty.”

“So, interview them all.”

“We can't.”

“Why?”

“Only six are kept on for the summer. The rest have eight-month contracts.”

“What? Does this university treat these people like itinerant workers? Can they do that?”

“Money-saving crap again,” Yslan said.

“The rest have left to find work for the summer, probably field
work, picking. We'll be lucky to find half of the total. But there's another problem.”

“Most of the signatures on the time sheets are illegible,” Yslan said.

“Find the supervisor and ask him,” Decker replied.

“That's the last and biggest problem.”

“What is?”

“He's missing.”

THAT NIGHT DECKER ACCOMPANIED YSLAN AND HARRISON AS
they interrogated the few janitors they could find. Over and over he closed his eyes, felt the cold and blood between his fingers and saw perfect geometric shapes—all of these people were telling the truth. Exhausted, he climbed into his bed. It was just past 4:00 a.m. when he heard it again.

Clattering. He'd heard it every night he'd slept in the dorm room, but now it was louder. He flicked on the light and there standing on his desk, its tail raised and ready to strike, was a large scorpion. He stared at it. This wasn't the Southwest. This was upper New York State. Then the thing turned and Decker saw its heart pulse in its thorax.

He pulled on his coat and yanked at the door handle. It was locked. He banged on it and his marine opened the door. “Tell her I'm not staying in this room. Tell her now.”

“You can't—”

“Yeah, well what are you going to do? Shoot me?” He pushed his way past his marine and strode out into the cold night.

The sky was cloudless and the stars pierced through the darkness and made Decker shiver. The moon was above Venus, the four stars of the Southern Cross were to one side, and Scorpio dominated the western sky, its red heart-star pulsing.

Decker turned quickly—this couldn't be. Fucking upper New York State was way up in the Northern Hemisphere and yet above
him was the southern sky of Namibia. Then he thought about that—above him, above him, not above everyone, just above him.

His phone buzzed, and Eddie's excited voice whispered, “Mission accomplished.”

“Eddie are you—”

“Sure? Hell yes, otherwise I'd never quote George W.”

“YOU THINK YOU CAN TRADE WITH ME!”

“Yeah—you and the NSA, and that grumpy guy.”

“I can have you arrested.”

“I know that.”

“Mr. Roberts, the president arrives in four hours and there are more than two hundred people dead and you at least claim to have the information as to who did this, so—”

“So trade, Special Agent Yslan Hicks—trade. I give you the URL at the other end of Professor Frost's PROMPTOR account, and you pursue a certain New York City lawyer as if he were the inventor and head of PROMPTOR itself.”

“That Charendoff shit again?”

“Bingo. Haunt him, make his life a misery with the PROMPTOR stuff, and I'll give you the URL at—”

“Yeah, I get that.” She thought for a moment then said, “Crazy Eddie figured it out, didn't he?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

“Apparently something to do with the Arab Spring and thousands of people wanting PROMPTOR accounts so your counterparts in repressive regimes can't track them down.”

“Don't compare me to—”

“Fine. I don't compare you. You work for the good guys—as you no doubt believe—hence using the same tactics as those who work for the bad guys is okay.”

“You're on a tangent, Mr. Roberts.” Decker recognized the line as something from an early Sean Penn film—something based on a Springsteen song.

“The Arab Spring?” she prompted.

“Eddie says there were so many requests that PROMPTOR couldn't handle them. So they began to pass them off to subsidiaries who didn't have the refined protections that PROMPTOR has.”

“So he got into the system itself.”

“Is that a question?”

“No.”

“Well, you're right. He got inside and now he can navigate within PROMPTOR and hence has the information that you are so desperate to find.”

“And you'll trade—”

“For you and yours making Mr. Ira Charendoff—lawyer of Patchin Place, New York City, probable killer of that boy in Stanstead, Quebec, and definitely the one who forced Crazy Eddie to betray me—make his life a living hell. So that he can't even think about coming after me again. Accuse him of being the mastermind behind PROMPTOR. Eddie will supply the information.”

“But it's a lie.”

“Yeah, well that may be, but it'll take him almost all of his considerable resources and probably the better part of five years to prove that it's a lie.”

“And that's what you want in return for the identity of the terrorist?”

“It is. And I'm not prepared to negotiate my terms.”

That was when Harrison barged in with Mr. T and Ted Knight—and a set of handcuffs and shackles.

WALTER WAITED OUTSIDE THE CHURCH. TWICE HE NODDED TO
the Secret Service guy on the steps and the guy nodded back. Eventually the supervisor's assistant came out on the front steps looking for the supervisor, as Walter knew he would.

“You not doing anything, William?” the guy asked.

Walter didn't bother correcting him but climbed the steps and acknowledged that he was free. “Do you need a hand?”

“Sure as hell do. Come on. The fucking supervisor thinks that cleaning's beneath him.”

“Does he?” Walter asked innocently.

“Yeah. And my back's killing me.”

“Okay, I'll give you a hand.”

The assistant supervisor turned to the Secret Service guy and said, “I can't do this alone. This is William, I need him to help me.”

The Secret Service guy recognized Walter from days earlier when he had cleaned the church and this very guy was overseeing security.

More good luck,
Walter thought. But he corrected himself:
This is more than good luck.
He didn't know the word “omen” except as the title of one of his favourite horror flicks, but he intrinsically understood and believed in the concept. And the security guy being the same one who saw him before was a sign. A sign that this was meant to be.
Yes,
he thought,
this whole thing was meant to be.

“Okay,” the Secret Service guy said.

Walter entered and went directly to the basement, opened the far door as if to air out the place, then emptied the dirty mop water into
one of the industrial sinks. He put aside the mop and slowly made his way back past another Secret Service guy and up the stairs to the main sanctuary.

The supervisor's assistant was making a final inspection of the place.
Mustn't be dirty for these rich kids' folks. Mustn't have these privileged folks put their butts into filth
. Walter thought,
They ought to see where I have to live
.

“Good, William,” the supervisor's assistant said, taking off his rubber gloves. As he headed out the front door he said, “I'm trusting you to do a good job, William. Everything in its place, everything in perfect alignment.”

“Walter.”

“What?

“Nothing, sir.”

“And be sure you put things away properly.”

Then he was gone.

Walter looked around, then began to clean. The properness of the place drove him nuts. Everything had a perfect match across the way. Everything was perfectly twinned—actually squared. It was nuts, just nuts as far as Walter was concerned. He waited for the Secret Service guy he saw downstairs to come upstairs then he retreated to the basement and put away his cleaning equipment—carefully looked around to be sure that he was alone—then he undid the screws the Secret Service guys had used to fasten the panels leading to the ductwork of the church. They'd used screws that were supposed to be impossible to remove, but Walter was a janitor and had faced off with the smartest, often most secretive kids in the country. So he'd seen screws like this and had long ago figured out how to undo them. He did just that, then slid open the panel and crawled up into the ductwork. He went in feetfirst to allow him to slide the grating back into place and the screws back into their holes so that from the outside it would appear like nothing had changed.

It was tight work and his hands began to sweat. The top two screws went into their sockets with little trouble, but the bottom left one almost made him cry it was so hard to get it into the hole.
Finally he got it in and was about to work on the final one when he heard a Secret Service guy come back into the basement.