The Liar's Lullaby (23 page)

“Oh, dear,” Ferd said.

“Get a table. I’ll get coffee and try to narrow down the possibilities.”

She got in the line. If Archangel X was the hefty intruder who had tackled her in Tasia’s house, she’d have to extrapolate. Nobody in the Starbucks was wearing camo and a balaclava. Plenty of the men looked like they would shop at the Big ’n’ Tall. Ferd found a table and sat down, clutching his phone like a phaser.

She took a longer look at the various people who were engaged with their computers and phones.

Most of them were reading while they drank their coffee. Every now and then, leisurely, they’d scroll down a page. A few others were flitting around the keyboard. At the counter a woman in a green hat held her laptop against her chest, screen open, typing with one finger while holding out her mug to the barista for a refill. Only a minority of people were typing furiously, as if engaged in an online flame war. But that still left around twenty people. Jo edged up to the counter and ordered two large coffees.

When she set Ferd’s coffee on the table, he said, “Archangel X’s last comment was ten minutes ago. If he’s gone, I wouldn’t know it yet. I’ve provoked him with a really snide reply to his last comment, so we’ll see.”

He looked around, blinking rapidly, and wiped his upper lip. He couldn’t have looked shiftier if he’d had a bomb strapped to his chest. Jo took a swallow of her coffee and panned the place. This was San Francisco, supposedly the center of laid-back California. And 90 percent of the people in sight had nervous tics and compulsive behavior.

Ferd sat up straight. “He just posted. Oh, dear.”

He showed Jo the phone.
“Angel”? Tasia was a COW. She trampled everybody’s dreams. She deserved to die.

Oh, dear, indeed. “It’s too hard to tell who’s replying to you. There’s a lag in the timing.”

Ferd frowned and his eyes zigged back and forth, as though he was computing something. “I have an idea. Maybe I can kick him offline.”

“How?”

He got his wallet and took out a Starbucks prepaid wireless access card. “Fire up your laptop.”

She got it from her satchel. “What are you going to do?”

He took the laptop. “You sure this isn’t illegal?”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do. And I’m a doctor, not a lawyer.”

He brought up a browser. Using the wireless access card, he logged on to the Starbucks network from Jo’s computer.

He took a theatrically deep breath. “I’m going to call Customer Service. Here goes.”

He called the number on the back of the wireless card. After a moment he said, “Hope you can help me. I’m sitting in a Starbucks in San Francisco and I can’t get online.” He listened for a moment. “Tried that.” Nodding. “And that. Ran through everything, did a self-diagnostic. I’m having no luck.”

He flicked a look at Jo and nodded like a rabid beaver. “My e- mail address, sure. It’s Archangel X, no space, at Hotmail,” he said.

Jo smiled at his audacity. For the next minute she listened to him answer questions. Customer service was running him through a drill to find out what the problem was. Ferd, to her surprise, was charming and persistent.

Finally he looked up, bright-eyed. “Let me put you on speaker so I can type.” He set the phone on the table. “Could you repeat that?”

A youngish voice echoed from the phone. “I’m accessing real-time information for your location. My information shows that you
are
online.”

Bingo. Jo balled her hands and pressed them against her knees. Archangel X was there.

Ferd cleared his throat. “No, I’m not.”

“You’re on—I see you here on my screen. Your machine is transmitting data, and it’s logged in under the Archangel X address.”

Jo was amazed. AT&T and Starbucks were doing the dirty work for Ferd.

Ferd put a note of innocent desperation in his voice. “Please, could you help me? I know you say I’m online but I’m sitting here with an
access denied
message, wasting the money I paid for this wireless card, feeling my ulcer act up. Can you reset my connection?”

After a pause, the customer service voice said, “Okay. Hold on.”

Jo was impressed. Ferd, by being ballsy and smart, was going to force customer service to break Archangel X’s connection.

Ferd picked up the phone and covered the mouthpiece. “When Archangel X gets knocked off, look around to see who gets upset.”

They waited. Ferd, still covering the mouthpiece, said, “How far do you want to take this? If I can get customer service to help ‘log me in again,’ I might be able to hijack Archangel X’s connection with log-in info. He won’t be able to get back on. That’ll really tick him off.”

Jo checked her watch. It had been six minutes since Bohr told her a plainclothes cop was on the way.

“Okay.”

“But we have to be fast.”

Customer service came back. “Sir, I’m now going to reset your connection. Wait sixty seconds and log in again.”

“Thank you,” Ferd said.

He hung up. They looked around, trying not to be obvious.

People continued to drink coffee and fiddle with their electronic toys. The baby in the stroller threw the iPhone to the floor.

Jo glanced back at her screen. “Did it work?”

Ferd looked at her computer. “We’ll find out.”

 

 

W
HAT WAS THIS?

NMP stopped typing. The wireless signal had dropped out. The page wouldn’t load, wouldn’t send the comment to the board.

“Stupid . . .” Pounding the keys. No joy. Tried logging in again—got an error message.

What was going on?

NMP leaned back. Were they watching? Somebody monitoring the boards?

Damn, was the government tracking NMP’s digital warnings about Tasia?

NMP, Big Bad Bastard, Archangel X, felt his heart beat faster. He looked around with just his eyes. He felt his mask begin to slip. Noel Michael Petty peeped out for a second, mewling like a kitten.

Somebody had tattled. And with wrenching insight, like fat hands grabbing a rib cage and tearing it open, NMP knew who had told. It cut like a knife. Proof, the finale. The last betrayal.

Petty had been so careful, watching every word, taking on the disguise of NMP, moderating all comments behind the digital avatar of Archangel X. Protecting Noel Michael Petty. But also protecting Noel Michael Petty’s idol.

For nothing. NMP closed the laptop. Felt the antenna, broken and sharp, waiting.

E
DIE WILSON STOPPED PACING AND POINTED AT THE TELEVISION screen. “That car. The SUV.”

In the studio at the network’s San Francisco affiliate, she and a news producer huddled in an editing suite, watching the video her cameraman had shot outside the police shrink’s house. The producer paused the playback. It showed the black Toyota 4Runner, caught driving away from Edie and the rest of the press herd.

“And?” the producer said.

Edie waved at the screen. “The shrink went with this guy. If we find him, we’re one step ahead of everybody else next time we want a quote from her.”

“Did you try contacting her through the SFPD’s media relations people? Set up an interview?”

“Tranh, the police department is never going to let us talk to her. And now she’s had a warning. She’ll guard herself from saying anything revealing.”

“Isn’t that her job?” the producer said. “Keeping things confidential?”

Edie sat down next to him. “She’s trained not to spill things her patients tell her. But that’s consciously. The trick will be to work on her unconscious. Get her to let down her guard. That’s the fun of this job.”

“And to what end?” Tranh said.

Edie threw her hands in the air. “You kidding? This is the story of a lifetime. We have to attack it.” She pointed at the screen. “This psychiatrist knows what’s going on. And she’s hiding it from the public. It’s our responsibility as journalists to bring it to light.”

“The public has the right to know.”

“Don’t give me that little postmodern millennial sneer. They do.” She scooted her chair closer to Tranh and lowered her voice. “Look at the SUV. Handsome young guy at the wheel—probably her boyfriend. She’ll stick close to him.” She nodded at the screen. “Advance a few frames.”

When Tranh advanced the video, Edie tapped the screen with one of her bitten-down nails. “Stop. That. See?”

Tranh paused the video. Edie pointed to the SUV. In the back window was a sticker. She didn’t need to ask him to zoom in.

“Isn’t that interesting,” she said.

“ ‘My kid is an honor student at Saint Ignatius School’?”

“No, the other one. It’s military.”

He worked on the focus. “Air National Guard. Moffett Field.”

“So maybe there’s a connection with the government,” Edie said.

This time, she didn’t bother telling Tranh to wipe the sneer off his face. He knew he was in a losing game. She was a woman on the rise, and if she wanted to play the story from this angle, he couldn’t stop her.

“Just make it worth our time,” he said. “It needs to be good television.”

She smiled. “Great. Zoom out. Get the tag number on the SUV.”

Tranh did.

Smiling, Edie called her researcher. “I need you to find somebody in the California DMV who can run a license plate. I don’t care who or how, but get me the name and address of the owner.”

She hung up. “You won’t regret this, Tranh.”

“Be sure I don’t.”

F
ERD TYPED ON JO’S LAPTOP. HE BIT HIS CHEEK AND GLANCED AROUND the Starbucks.

On his phone, Jo read the running blog commentary between Ferd and his dozen sock puppets and Archangel X.

Ferd had replied,
Is that your best imitation of a political statement?

Archangel X:
Greed and rapacity ARE political statements. Possession is political. Hoarding is political. Exclusion is political. And Tasia collected trophies, hoarded them, created a barrier that was totally binary. In or out. Some of us were fooled for a while, and even thought of ourselves as fans. But she screwed us, figuratively if not literally.

Then, farther down the page:
None of this shit matters. She ended everything for me. There’s only one thing left to do.

The air seemed to grow cooler. “Dear God. He’s going to go out in a blaze of glory.”

“What?” Ferd looked at Jo with deep worry, and then at her computer. His voice rose with excitement. “I’m on. I got it. I’m in as Archangel X. We’ve locked him out.”

Jo gestured for him to quiet down, and called Chuck Bohr. “Archangel’s here. Verified that he’s in the Starbucks, and I think he’s planning something violent. Where’s your plainclothes guy?”

“You have him identified?”

“Not physically, just digitally. But—”

“I need more. I can’t have a police officer charge into Starbucks and demand to see everybody’s e-mails. I have no probable cause.”

Frustrated, she tried Tang again. This time she got hold of her. “Amy, I need help.”

“I’m in the middle of a situation. This isn’t a good time,” Tang said.

Jo explained what was happening. There was a lengthy, strained silence on Tang’s end. “Okay. I’ll get there. Keep him online.”

Tang hung up before Jo could reiterate that they’d just kicked Archangel X offline and made that tactic impossible.

Jo scrolled through Archangel’s blog comments.
Sure, everybody idolizes the dead. But face facts, she used men and ruined them for everybody else.

Fear? Fear of women? Of sex?

Jealousy?

Vast, egomaniacal presumption.

Jo stared at the message. “When he’s been in touch with you, has he ever signed a message NMP?”

Ferd nodded. “The first couple of times.”

She handed him back his phone. “Search for those initials in connection with Tasia McFarland, with the president, and with Searle Lecroix.”

She got up and walked to the counter and poured milk into her lukewarm coffee.
Archangel X, who are you?
And what was so out of kilter about the messages?

Behind her, the baby screeched. Two men scraped their chairs back and stood up. At the counter the woman in the green hat complained that her coffee was the wrong blend. Jo walked back to the table.

Ferd said, “Got it. Jo, look at this.” He showed her the tiny screen. A comment thread on a political message board, right after Tasia’s death.

The comment was signed. The name jumped out at Jo.

Her vision pinged. “Got you.”

There was no way to see if the commenter was writing from the Archangel X e-mail address, but from the structure and tone and vocabulary of his messages, this was NMP. And NMP was Archangel X.

She called Tang back.

Tang answered. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Hold your horses.”

“Noel Michael Petty,” Jo said.

J
O GAZED AROUND THE STARBUCKS. AT A TABLE NEAR THE DOOR, A chunky man with deep acne scars frowned at his cell phone. He lumbered to his feet and turned to go.

“Is it him?” Ferd said.