Spyware

The two of them drove the car around the block, then rolled it quietly back up to the corner where a well-placed hedge provided cover. With binoculars to his eyes, Johansen watched the front door of the house. Vasquez fiddled with the wiretap equipment, trying to eliminate the background squelch.

“Are you sure you planted the thing right?” asked Vasquez, looking annoyed. The sun was hot and the headphones weren’t helping.

“That phone she has a death grip on is bugged, I guarantee it,” he said. He glanced away from his binoculars and gave her a look. She knew that he had detected her mood, and understood it.

“You stretched things a bit back there,” he said.

“Yes, I know. Have you seen anything?”

He turned back to watching the front door. “If she’s contacting Vance, I’ll be damned if I know how. Maybe she has a CB radio in there.”

She made an exasperated sound as she fiddled with the signal. The NSEC had power, you had to give them that. The moment they contacted them, the federal wiretap warrant was burning in their hands. This case was bigger than anything she had ever handled before, and she felt certain that her progress was being closely monitored. Other teams were now involved and the higher-ups were riding everyone hard.

“Did you mean what you told her?” asked Johansen, keeping his eyes to his lenses this time. She glanced at his broad back. There had to be three square yards of white fabric in the man’s shirt.

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“You might have told me first.”

“You’re right. But I didn’t know it first.”

“Sounds like she got to you as much as you got to her.”

“Sometimes it’s like that. Part of the job.”

“May I point out that we aren’t a kidnapping detail? That we’re strictly a high-tech unit?”

“Well, there’s nothing low-tech about this case.”

“So you want to do it, if we can get the assignment?”

“Yes. Are you in?”

“We’re partners, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.”

They fell silent for a time. The front door didn’t open. The phone didn’t ring, nor was an out-going call made.

“I expected her to go for it right away,” she said.

“Maybe Vance was smart and didn’t even give her a way to contact him,” Johansen commented. “He had to have left in a big hurry, after all. You know-Whoa, hold on a sec.”

She leaned up and craned her neck. She touched his shoulder, and cursed herself for feeling a tingle in her fingers. “What is it?”

“She’s coming out. She’s out. She’s walking toward us?”

“Damn! Does she see us?”

Johansen was silent for several seconds. She cursed his back and smelled the slight taint of sweat that an entire stick of deodorant couldn’t completely erase.

“It’s the Trumble’s,” he said at last. “She looked both ways, walked quickly and snuck next door to knock on their door. She looks like as guilty as a junior high shop-lifter.”

She laid her head back against the headrest. She couldn’t stop smelling him for some reason. She rolled her eyes at herself. She was the guilty junior-high kid here.

“We’ll have to bug the Trumble’s.”

“That means another warrant.”

“Let’s get to work.”

Without another word, they shut down the surveillance and started up the car. She blessed the air conditioner when it came on. It pushed back the California afternoon heat. It also killed Johansen’s hot smell.

… 53 Hours and Counting…

Ray had a problem. He needed electrical power and anonymity. He couldn’t go to the college or a friend’s house. And motel rooms seemed too obvious, he didn’t want to be where anyone would expect to see him. He finally decided that the public library would have to do. The odds weren’t too high that he would meet a student or a colleague there, he reasoned, as they would normally use the campus library. Just in case, he bought a baseball cap and a pair of gasoline-colored glasses that were advertised as ‘driving shades’. He had once read somewhere that the best disguises were simple ones that made a person look as if they came from a different walk of society. With this in mind, he had bought a plaid shirt, worn levis and a pair of old work boots at the thrift shop downtown.

Feeling a bit silly, he approached the glass doors of the ski-chalet style building. It had been built in the seventies, when bonds for library construction had been easy to come by. Now, with cut-back hours and a mostly volunteer staff, it had turned into a hangout for elderly people and the homeless.

He walked past a row of unwashed, sleeping men in the carrels. Most slept with their heads cradled on their folded arms. Ray felt sorry for them. He supposed it was better than sleeping out on the grass. Here it was quiet and air-conditioned. Perhaps they spent the nights wandering the streets. The elderly patrons were mostly clustered around the newspaper and magazine racks. There, they quietly ran out their lives. Occasionally they flipped a page or cleared a throat. For them, he supposed, it was better than sitting home alone watching TV. One thing was clear: few of the patrons studied here anymore.