Known Dead_ A Novel - Donald Harstad [97]
She looked at the sheet again. ‘‘But,’’ she said, her voice getting louder, ‘‘that motherfucker is just outside in the parking lot!’’
‘‘Slow down,’’ I said. ‘‘We know he is.’’
‘‘Then go get his ass!’’
‘‘Not yet,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Calm down. That’s where you come in.’’
Nancy took a deep breath, then another. ‘‘Okay, so why not? Why’s he still loose? Why not get him now?’’
‘‘The way we got the message,’’ I said, ‘‘might give us a little admissibility problem.’’ Not true, of course. At least, not in the strict sense of criminal procedures. The admissibility came from not wanting to admit what we’d done to the FBI. But Nancy sure didn’t have to know that. At least, not to help us get the information from another source.
Nancy looked at both of us in turn. ‘‘You’re kidding . . .’’
‘‘Had to be done,’’ said Hester. ‘‘No other way to get timely data.’’
‘‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’’ said Nancy, ‘‘because they got Phil. I don’t want anybody getting off here.’’
I thought it was pretty clearly implied that, if whoever shot Phil got off, Nancy’s paper would kill us. That was fair enough.
‘‘Now,’’ I said, ‘‘we have less than an hour here, so let’s get down to it . . .’’
After refreshing her memory a little, which certainly didn’t take much, we asked Nancy what Phil could have said or done that would give the impression that he had a bomb. At first she couldn’t think of anything, but then she remembered Phil’s bottled mineral water. He always drank it, when he could get it, and liked it cold. He had a habit of wrapping it in two of those beer can insulators, and just sticking the neck of the bottle through the little hole in the ‘‘bottom’’ of the upper insulator. He had obtained his insulators from an implement dealer during a photo session, so the two insulators were black, with a yellow rectangle with black printing on the side. In effect, a black cylinder about ten inches long, as big around as a beer can, with a small, white cap on one end.
‘‘He left it at my car,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘When we were going to go in together, he realized he didn’t have it. One of your reserve guys went to the car and got it for him.’’
No shit.
‘‘Borcherding was set up near the car,’’ said Nancy.
‘‘I know,’’ I said. ‘‘You pointed him out, sort of.’’
‘‘He could have seen that. When the cop brought it to him. Phil probably just stuck it in his bag. He wouldn’t have tried to hide it or anything.’’ She thought a second. ‘‘He had a cell phone modem thingy on his laptop.’’
‘‘Borcherding? Are you sure?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Yeah. I told Phil that I’d have to get one like that.’’
‘‘So Borcherding probably wasn’t really inventing the part about the ‘bomb,’ then, was he?’’
‘‘Probably not, Carl.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘Probably not.’’ She looked up. ‘‘That fucker.’’ She thought again for a few seconds. ‘‘You’re absolutely sure it was him?’’
‘‘Yes,’’ I said, looking her straight in the eye. ‘‘We know the message came straight from his e-mail address, and could have been sent only by somebody at the scene.’’ I hesitated for a second. ‘‘None of the networks had a live feed going.’’
‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘No, they never went live until after Phil was shot. I know that.’’
Hmm. Well, by that time our dispatch center would have been so busy they probably turned the TV off.
‘‘We don’t have any reason to believe he gave his laptop to anybody else,’’ said Hester. ‘‘His password had to be used to log on to the server. If he’d loaned it to somebody else, they’d have used their password, most likely. And his seems to be one of those little local companies . . .’’
‘‘He runs his own server,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘He brags about it.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘He’s one of those people who think they can get in your pants by telling you all the techno drivel they have in their entire head. Supposed to make us horny, or something.’’ She snorted. ‘‘Likely.’’
‘‘Really?’’ That surprised me.
‘‘Oh, yeah. They think it’s erotic.’’
‘‘No, no,’’ I said, grinning. ‘‘Just surprised he has his own server. What do they call it?’’ I asked.
‘‘Oh, shit,’’ she