The Last Day Page 8

  It was odd, standing there studying a man sleeping like he didn't have a care in the world. And it was exhilarating to know you would be carving him up in forty hours, give or take. Deciding he should not do anything more, he left the room, closing the door behind him.

  He went into the child's bedroom, opened the dresser, and placed a special object he'd fashioned under the child's folded underwear.

  Outside, the heat hit him like a blast from an open oven door. Watcher made a beeline up through the woods, passing his hide. He kept going until he arrived at the back door of the small house in the subdivision that bordered the McCarty acres. He went to the guest bedroom, his media room, and listened to the audio of the dinner conversation he'd captured. He especially enjoyed the part about the baseball. Being in denial, not seeing themselves as evil people, they dismissed the idea that someone from the outside could violate their precious and expensive security system. The McCarty home was a house divided, and it was going to get much worse.

  He looked at the stuffed bear, picked it up, and pressed the hand to hear the message a mother had put there for a child who could never hear it again. He laughed and, holding the animal by its arms, made the bear perform a dance of death.

  TWENTY-ONE

  At 7:43 A.M. Alice Palmer parked her battered Toyota in the student lot and walked away without locking it. Investigator Todd Hartman moved at an angle across a grassy knoll to intercept her on the walkway leading to the nearby campus buildings. Even if Todd hadn't seen her driver's license and student ID pictures on- line, he would have recognized her from Ward McCarty's description, accurate right down to her rainbow nails.

  Head down and wearing a baggy tie- dyed T-shirt, cutoff denim shorts, and yellow flip- flops, she approached in a thin line of students trickling from the parking lot.

  When she was ten feet away, Todd stepped into her path.

  “Alice Palmer,” he said, turning on his warmest smile.

  Blocked by the imposing stranger, she stopped and stared up at him. When she grimaced, her braces glittered.

  “My name is Todd Hartman. I'm an investigator.”

  “Good for you,” she said, her eyes suddenly suspicious, “I got a class. See ya.” But she didn't try to go around him.

  “We need to talk for just a minute,” Todd said.

  She looked down. “About what? You think I did something, Officer?”

  “I'm a private investigator and my client has hired me to retrieve something for him he believes might be in your possession.”

  “Who?” Her eyes looked right then left ner vously to take in the students walking past.

  “There's something he may have left on a plane and he really hopes you were kind enough to pick up for him. You sat beside him Sunday on the flight from Las Vegas.”

  Todd saw it register in her little kleptomaniac mind, and, almost as quickly she was weighing the various routes of escape open to her. He had given her plenty of wiggle room, and a way to save face. She wouldn't have to admit any wrongdoing.

  “I didn't take his little toy car,” she said, cutting her eyes to the right.

  “I didn't say it was a little toy car, Alice.”

  “You sure did. So, I hope he finds it,” she said, skirting him.

  “There's a reward,” Todd said to her back. “A rather substantial one, I suspect.”

  She stopped and turned. “How substantial?”

  “That model car meant a lot to his son. This is purely a sentimental item for him.”

  “Well, he said he didn't have kids. Is he like a liar?”

  “His son is dead. If you can help him, he would really appreciate it.” Todd took a card from his shirt pocket and held it out to her. “Maybe it fell into your bag and you didn't even realize it.”

  “I'll check and if it somehow did, I'll call you. And you'll …”

  “Pay you a cash reward of five hundred dollars. Everybody makes out. No questions asked, no police involvement.”

  “Cool,” she said cheerfully, as she took the card. “You know, he said he'd give me a free toy car.”

  “He'll be happy to do that. He asked me to talk to you because he just wants his son's car back.”

  A slight smile blossomed in her eyes and she combed her hair back with short fingers. “Are you sure he didn't send you because he was like attracted to me? He was, you know.” She smiled at Todd, and walked away with a spring in her step that hadn't been there before.

  Todd watched her, thinking.

  Something about the odd- looking girl made him uneasy. History told him that big trouble often sprang from small boxes.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It took a concerted effort for Ward to open his eyes. Lying on the bed in his clothes, his body felt heavy. He could tell he'd overslept by the angle of the sun's rays stretched across the floor. He stood and went into the bathroom to shower, and after, as he shaved, he studied his face in the mirror. The still- young man staring back at Ward had the dull gaze of a man who'd had too much to drink, and the body seemed to have softer edges than he remembered. How many Scotches had he consumed the night before? As best he could recall he'd had no more than two drinks. He didn't remember feeling tipsy, nor did he have any memory of going to bed in his clothes.

  Up until a year ago, Ward had been in pretty good physical condition. He had done daily laps in their pool year- round, and he and Natasha rode their bikes several miles through the countryside. While his biceps were still solid enough and his leg muscles well defined, Ward was going to seed, and he resolved to start riding his bike again.

  In the kitchen, Ward looked at Todd's business card. The address was the Bank of America Tower, pretty expensive real estate. The card contained a landline, a fax number, and a cellular line. Ward slipped it into his wallet next to a picture of Barney and Natasha.

  Ward looked out at the covered swimming pool and felt a rush of sadness. The fading blue cover had remained in place since just after the accident. A year before, he and Barney had been swimming in the pool when the phone rang. Ward had been expecting a call. His uncle had business to discuss. Ward left Barney alone for a minute. He rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the phone before voice mail picked up. As he spoke with his uncle, the lights blinked for a split second. A flicker. A damaged spot in the insulation on a wire connecting the pool's pump and the lights had become saturated by the sprinkler system, and when the barefoot and wet child got out of the pool he stepped on a hot spot and was electrocuted, his heart stopping forever. When Barney fell, he broke the connection. Had that not been the case, Ward would have also been electrocuted when he'd knelt and grabbed his son up into his arms. The child had a gash in his head from the fall, which never bled because his heart had stopped.

  When Ward turned, his eyes found the defib-rillator case on the refrigerator. He'd bought the apparatus after Barney's death. Maybe if he'd had it then, he could have brought his son back. Its presence was a perfect example of closing the barn door after the horses were running free in the meadow.

  Ward wiped a tear from his eye. He unplugged his cell phone from the charger, slipped it into his pocket, and took his keys and briefcase before leaving the house. The BMW's big eight-cylinder purred, and as he pressed down on the accelerator, he could hear the tires against the asphalt humming as he gained speed. He tuned in to that sound and tuned everything else out.

  When his cell phone rang a few minutes into the trip, Ward glanced at the name and saw that his uncle was calling.

  “Yes, Unk,” he answered.

  “Ward, where the hell are you?” Mark yelled into the phone. “I've been calling you for an hour.”

  “I overslept. I'm leaving the house. What's up?”

  “We've got big trouble here.”

  “As in?”

  “Computer virus. It's a disaster.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Natasha closed the door to her office and sat heavily in her chair. She picked up
the phone with steady hands and called Dr. Edmonds's receptionist to make an appointment on that Friday for a consultation. Normally it would have taken weeks to get in to see the specialist, but with physician's credentials, exceptions were ordinary She hung up the phone and turned to her computer to check her e-mails.

  There was a light rapping on her door and she turned around to see Dr. Walls. “Natasha, could I have a word?”

  “Sure, George,” she said with a smile. “Come in.”

  “I want to discuss your tremors.”

  “I just made an appointment with Dr. Edmonds. It really isn't a big deal. In fact it's getting better, but I wanted to be sure.”

  “I've spoken with the partners, and we agree that you should let us cover your surgeries until you've seen Dr. Edmonds. Before you protest, let me say that we know you are under a lot of pressure, and we're sure you'll be good as new in short order. I hope you don't see this as meddling, but I think you'll agree that there's a lot at stake here for all of us. You are an exceptional physician, and we all care a great deal about you.” He tapped his hands on her desk to punctuate his last point, and to give it finality.

  “I understand fully,” she heard herself saying, “and I appreciate your concern.” She felt assailed professionally, but she knew she had no business operating in her present condition. She wanted to know what was wrong with her.

  “We'll just take the precaution and cover your surgeries until then,” George said, smiling. “And if you'd like to take a few days, we will gladly cover your other appointments.”

  “Of course,” she said. “And thank you. But covering my nonsurgical appointments won't be necessary.”

  “If your hands were to shake while you were seeing a patient…” He paused. “Well, word might get around. I think it is for the best. Just get some well- deserved rest and don't worry about anything.”

  George left the room and Natasha felt embarrassed and even, to some degree, grateful. She looked at her hands and they began to tremble ever so slightly.

  Opening her laptop, she went into her e-mail and ran down the list of waiting correspondence. One was from Ward, titled “You have to see this.” She clicked on it and sat stunned as the screen began filling with a changing montage of horrible images she couldn't believe she was seeing.

  “Oh, my dear god,” she said. Her heart pounded and she slammed her eyes closed, fighting to control her breathing. “My god. He's completely lost his mind.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Ward rushed into the RGI building. As he passed by the receptionist, he saw that her phone lines were all lit up, and he could hear a loud angry voice leaking from her headset.

  “Mr. McCarty” she said, covering the mouthpiece. “Mr. Wilson is waiting for you up in the conference room.”

  Ward took the steps three at a time, rushed to the door, and entered the crowded conference room. His uncle was talking to their head computer technician, Paul Wolfe. A pair of Wolfe's assistants were staring at the screens of laptops open on the table. Over the men's shoulders Ward saw pop- ups opening and stacking in rapid sequence on the screen, each flying up and covering the last in the space of a second or two. It took Ward a minute to realize what he was looking at, but by that point he already felt ill. Naked bodies flashed rapidly, one after the other.

  “What's this? What the hell's going on?” he demanded.

  “Kiddie porn,” Mark said.

  “Somebody had that on one of our computers?” Ward asked, furious at the thought. “Who?”

  “We don't know, but our servers are inundated with pictures of kids engaged in sex acts with other kids, kids with adults. Jesus, there's even animals in the mix.”

  Paul Wolfe said, “Ward, this crap went out from our server. That's all I can tell at the moment. Viruses are sort of out of my line of expertise, but it's a replicating virus. We're offline and trying to figure out how to shut it down. I've got some calls in for help.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ward said. “What do you mean replicating? What the hell does that mean?”

  “It makes copies of itself.”

  “I know what replicating means!” Ward snapped.

  “I'm sorry. It gets sent in and sends itself back out to the e-mail addresses in the infected computer,” Wolfe said, red- faced.

  “So this got sent out to which of our e-mail addresses?”

  “All of them, from every computer in the house. The phones are ringing off the hook,” Mark said. “I've never seen anything this big or this bad. There's a massive freak- out going on that started with our clients and friends and families. The media is already calling us about it.”

  “And our company's signature is on the outgoing e-mails. We closed off the system to the outside immediately,” Wolfe said. “It opens infected computers to outside servers and downloads compressed files, and those files replicate over and over so our server's memory keeps filling up, and as it does so it overwrites what's stored there. We back up everything nightly, so we won't lose anything we had before the invasion. I think it'll stop when it finishes filling the available memory, but who knows.”

  “Call the police,” Ward said, feeling as though someone had dropped a waterbed on him.

  “I called the cops right before you got here,” Mark told him. “This is illegal as hell. This will ruin us. I've called our PR firm so we can get in front of this.”

  “I'll call …” Ward didn't even finish the thought. He just dialed Gene's number.

  “Hello,” Gene answered.

  “Gene, it's Ward. Get out here right now.” Ward couldn't control the anxiety, the fear, in his voice.

  “I'm going into a meeting,” Gene replied. “What's up?”

  “Have you looked at your e-mails from us this morning?”

  “Tell him not to,” Paul Wolfe said.

  “Just a second,” Gene said. “I'm looking. Okay, here's one from you. ‘You have to see this.’ Okay…”

  “No, don't open it!” Ward yelled. “A virus has gone out to everybody in our address books and it's filling our servers with child porn. You open that and it will send it to all your e-mail contacts.”

  Paul added, “Tell him to shut down his system. Or delete everything from us without opening anything. Any e-mail that is headed ‘You have to see this’ is going to contain the virus.”

  Ward told Gene what Wolfe had said. “I need you here now,” Ward said. “Unk's already called the cops.”

  “Relax, I'm on my way,” Gene said. “Don't answer any questions from the cops or anybody else until I get there.”

  “I think this crap could be all over the country, hell, the world, in a matter of hours,” Paul Wolfe said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Hurry,” Ward said to Gene. He hung up and noticed a teary- eyed Leslie Wilde sitting at the end of the table with a crushed tissue in her hand. “Leslie, are you okay?”

  She looked up at him and shook her head vigorously “I'm sorry,” she said, sobbing freely, “Mr. McCarty I just turned on my terminal and it went crazy showing those images. I shut down the computer, but it was too late. I didn't mean … It's horrible. Those awful pictures …”

  “It isn't your fault,” Ward told her, sure that was the case. “We'll fix this,” he said to no one in particular, praying that it was even possible to fix. Thinking about their clients seeing these images made his heart sink.

  “Mr. McCarty,” the receptionist's voice said over the intercom. “There are two FBI agents here to see you.”

  Mark ran his fingers over his hair. “We're the victims here,” he told everybody in the room and nobody in particular. “Figure out a way to stop it immediately. Get it back or something. Remember, people, we don't make any statements until Gene gets here.”

  Ward told the receptionist to direct the agents up to the conference room.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The FBI agents looked to Ward like a pair of young stockbrokers dressed to call on a wealthy client. They introduced themselves as Bill Firman and Jo
hn Mayes, though Ward quickly forgot which was which.

  Despite what he had told the assembled seconds before the agents entered, Mark immediately started to explain to the pair what had happened, but as soon as they looked at the computer screen over the techs’ shoulders, Agent Firman said, “Sir, close the computer and move away from it.” To Mark he said, “Tell your employees to turn off their monitors. We'll have our techs here as soon as possible to take over.”

  “Agent Firman, we can't operate without our computers,” Mark protested.

  “I understand that,” Firman told Mark. “But someone here sent a virus of child pornography over the Internet. Whether or not you did it on purpose, it's a federal crime, so we'll need to interview any employee with access to your computers, see if we can figure out exactly who is responsible.”

  “Our attorney is on his way,” Ward said. “You can work it out with him. Until he gets here to sort this out, he's advised us not to answer any questions.”

  “Well,” Agent Firman said, “that's your right, Mr”

  “McCarty Ward McCarty.”

  “Ward is our CEO,” Mark said.

  “Well, Mr. McCarty, until we get this sorted out, we're closing down your computers. No employee is to remove anything from the premises, or leave the building, until we say so.”

  “You can't do that,” Ward said. “We called you.”

  “Actually Mr. McCarty,” the agent said, taking a folded piece of paper from his suit pocket. “Certain recipients of your illegal pornography called us. I have a warrant on the way,” he said. “Your computers are closed down until we say differently. Are you still online?”

  Paul shook his head. “We closed off the servers to the outside as soon as we saw what was happening.”