Cherry Bomb

“No.”

“I’m getting a mirror installed on the ceiling next week. Would that seal the deal?”

“There’s no way to trace it through the phone company?”

He pressed the button again. The bed began to rise.

“You know how cell phones work, right? By radio transmission. So they need ante

The small amount of hope I’d brought with me was quickly fading away. Then I remembered what Hajek said.

“Could you trace it by analyzing the SIM card? If she’s sending text messages?”

Harry looked thoughtful, then scratched himself again. It was like he had a metal hand and a pair of magnets in his scrotum.

Actually, he did have a metal hand. But he didn’t use that for scratching, and probably with good reason. I’d seen Harry accidentally crush a doorknob with that hand.

“That might actually work, sis, because texts are saved on the card. The spoof fools caller ID, but it might not fool the SIM.”

Harry walked past, into the lounge area opposite the sofa. He flipped a switch on the wall and a cabinet opened, a table coming down. It had a built-in keyboard and a flat-screen monitor, which flipped up. He dug a small white box out of a drawer and attached a cord to one end, plugging the other into a USB slot on the keyboard.

“Open the back of the phone and gimme the SIM.”

I pried out the little data card and handed it over, then spent a minute tracking down the vent that was blowing cold air in my face. I closed it, but that only made the other vents blow even harder.

“You like my screen saver?”

I glanced at the monitor, expecting to see some naked girl eating a banana. Instead it was a pic of Harry with his arm around my mother. Both were smiling. I felt myself wince.

“It’s…nice,” I managed.

“Me and Mom have a lot of catching up to do. Mother and son stuff.”

“You know, the DNA results haven’t come-”

“Gotcha, you little bastard! There’s the TAP/CIBER, and now I run the decryption program. This will take a few seconds. You get Mom anything for her birthday? I’m thinking a cat.”

Speaking of non sequiturs.

“We’ve already got a cat.”

“I know. Mr. Friskers, right? Is he still meaner than spit?”

“He’s currently in a kitty motel. It’s seventy-five bucks a day, plus we have to pay for injuries to the staff.”

“That could get pricey.”

“Hopefully that groomer won’t need eye surgery.”

“Does Mom like dogs? Or maybe a monkey? I’d like to have a monkey. You can teach them to fetch you things, like beer. A beer monkey. That would be cool. We could smoke cigars and watch King Kong together. I love the remake. It’s got the extended footage, which means it’s seventeen hours long. We can watch it later, on Blu-ray, if you want.”

“Were you ever tested for ADHD?” I asked.

“Yeah. But the Ritalin makes me hyper. Okay, the decryption is finished, and…there’s the phone number. I’m amazing.”

Harry pointed at it, and I wanted to punch the screen. It was the same Deer Park number Hajek had given me. My phone wasn’t a direct link to Alex, as I’d hoped. It was part of that call-forwarding daisy chain he had mentioned. I explained this to Harry.

“All’s not lost, sis. I can find the phone in Deer Park, get the SIM, and then locate the next phone in the chain. It will lead to Alex eventually.”

“There could be ten phones in the chain, Harry. You said you can only pinpoint the call within a few hundred yards, and she could have these hidden all over the country.”

“It’s a start. I’ve got an RF detector. I can find the phones.”

I closed my eyes, thinking. Normally, when I was chasing a perp, there were witnesses to interview, evidence to examine, clues to follow up on. Alex was effectively invisible, and could be anywhere. How the hell do you find a person who only shows you what she wants you to see?

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re our only hope here, Harry. There’s no other way to find her.”

“I can do it. It’ll just take some time.”

“Time is something we don’t have.”

“So I see.”

Harry brought the picture up on the monitor, of Lance taped to the bed and screaming. I checked my watch.

“Unless we can find him, he’s dead in just over eleven hours.”

Harry didn’t say anything, which was out of character. I wondered if the picture brought him back to the time he was Alex’s captive. She was the reason he had a prosthetic hand, and though he never talked about it, I knew a blowtorch played a part.

“We’ll find him,” Harry eventually said.

“How, if we can’t trace her calls?”

“She left us a clue.”

“What clue?”

“He’s a cop named Lance. Probably hundreds of those in the U.S. But how many have one of these?”

Harry pointed to the metal tripod, which held the thing that looked like a microphone over Lance’s head. I leaned in closer, squinting, and couldn’t believe I missed it earlier.

“It’s a pigstick,” I said.

“Yeah. Looks like old Lance is on the Bomb Squad. The pigstick is armed with a shotgun shell, attached to a blasting cap. That wire is shock tube, probably leading to a timer. When the time is up, the round fires into poor Lance’s face.”

If Alex was being honest. For all I knew, Lance might already be dead. Or he might not be named Lance at all. I stared at his face again, his agony forever frozen in time. I wondered if Alex was still burning him.

“Alex sent me an earlier text, a few weeks ago. Said she was in Milwaukee. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth or not.”

“She’s a lying crazy psycho bitch. Believing her is a mistake.”

“She bought this phone in Gurnee, which is on the way to Milwaukee. Maybe we should start heading up there.”

“If she’s lying, we could be heading in the wrong direction.”

I chewed my lower lip.

“You need to bring in the troops on this, Jackie. They can send out a bulletin to other cop shops. Maybe even get his face on TV.”

Harry must have noticed my reaction, because he shook his head.

“We don’t have to give them the phone. Or even a clone of the phone. We can forward the pictures and texts to one of their phones. Send it to fatso. He’ll take care of it.”

“Fine.” I held out my hand. “Give me the card back.”

“Let me save this first. Resolution is for shit. Maybe I can tweak it, get a serial number on the pigstick. Can’t be that many of those out there.”

Harry opened up a photo program, but my mind was elsewhere. I’d met a few Explosive Ordnance Disposal cops. Serious, professional guys. A pigstick was a portable arm that held a shell or a high-pressure water jet, used to remotely detonate suspicious devices. Detonation wire, shock tube, and blasting caps were tools of the EOD. But they weren’t the only tools.

Most bomb squads had bigger, more dangerous devices.

If Alex had a pigstick, what else could she have?