Cherry Bomb

For miles around Alex, the corn trembles and begs for mercy.

Alex’s blade stretches and curves, becoming a scythe.

As the world screams, Alex reaps.

CHAPTER 27

“I GOT NOTHING, SIS.”

I rubbed my eyes, which felt like I had sand under the lids. We were parked in an all-night diner lot, which was half-full even at five in the morning. I’d gone in earlier, not to eat but to borrow a phone book. Now I wished I’d eaten. The salsa-less tortilla chips and five sticks of jerky hadn’t done much to satisfy my hunger.

“Try searching for motel plus Zd plus Wisconsin,” I told Harry.

“I tried that. I’ve tried every possible Boolean search combination, and I don’t even know what Boolean means. Plus I’m exhausted. The only thing keeping me awake is this case of SuperMax Energy Drink I got at the discount store. What the hell is taurine anyway?”

“We’re all tired, McGlade. Try pinching yourself.”

“Does that work?”

“No. But it will amuse me.”

“Fu

“Milwaukee cops find him?” I asked Phin.

Phin shook his head. Naturally, Phin owned a police sca

I yawned. “Did you try another search engine?”

“I’m using an aggregator that searches all the top search engines, including foreign ones. I’ve found some pretty horrible things, Jackie. Do you know what a brass clown is?”

“No. And have no desire to find out.”

“It’s this sex thing. But it isn’t really sexual, unless you’re some sort of sicko nutjob. You take a cup. Guess what you do with the cup?”

“I don’t want to know what you do with the cup, and if you try to tell me I’ll hang up on you.”

“I wish I could do a system restore on my brain and go back to a time before I saw it. There are certain foods I can no longer eat.”

For the fiftieth time I fought the temptation to drive to the nearest motel and start randomly searching rooms. With several hundred hotels within ten square miles, the odds weren’t with us. Much better to stay centrally located and be ready to move when we got some information.

The problem was, we had no information. And I held out little hope that Alex would call back with a last-minute hint. The next time she called, it would be to send pictures of David Strang with his head blown off.

“Think Alex fucked him?” Harry asked.

“Not sure if it matters, McGlade.”

“Maybe it does. What if there was some sixty-nine action going on?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“A lot. If she was on top, she could have written the letters upside-down.”

I accessed the picture on the cell phone, then rotated it one hundred and eighty degrees.

How about that?

“I bow to your deviant mind, Harry. Try all the searches again using PZ.”

“Way ahead of you, Jackie. Got twenty-seven million hits. Some scientist named PZ. A punjabi site. An ID3 tag editor.”

“What’s that?”

“It helps you catalog your music collection if you appropriate MP3 files on the Internet.”

“Appropriate? You mean stealing.”

“File sharing isn’t stealing. If I stole your bike, you lost property. That’s theft. But if I copied your bike, you still have the bike.”

“Then I’ve lost my right to sell the bike. How can I sell the bike if everyone is copying it?”

I bet myself twenty bucks McGlade was rolling his eyes.

“What if I already have the music on vinyl? Can’t I download an MP3 of a song I already own?”

“Downloading music for free is illegal, Harry.”

“No it isn’t. Ask Phin.”

“I’m not asking Phin.”

“Ask Phin what?” Phin asked.

I sighed. “This really isn’t something we need to discuss right now. Or ever.”

I hit the button for speaker phone anyway and repeated Harry’s question.

“It’s illegal,” Phin said. “You’re taking money away from the artist. That’s what intellectual property laws are for.”

“So downloading an out-of-print album is bad, but it’s okay to rob a bank?”

“That’s illegal too,” Phin said.

“We need to stick to finding Lance,” I said.

“Phin, you ever see that brass clown video?”

“Yeah. It was horrible.”

“Lance,” I said, holding up the picture. “He’s going to die soon. Remember him?”

“Remember that cup scene?” Harry said.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t eat corn anymore because of that.”

“I had to give up Greek food for a while.”

“Why Greek? Oh…oh yeah. You know, the last Greek I ate was a sorority girl.”

I was going to tell them, more forcibly this time, to stay on task, but the word Greek stuck in my head and bounced around like a pinball. I looked at the PZ again.

“Harry, do a search for Greek alphabet.”

“She was a physical therapy major, Phin. Had an incredibly strong grip. I used to fake injuries.”

“Harry! The search!”

“Okay! Sure! Greek alphabet! Done! You happy?”

“What do P and Z stand for?”

“P is rho. Z is zeta. Rho zeta?”

“Row zayta. Row zeta. Rosetta?”

I flipped the Yellow Pages open to Motels and searched the Rs. No Rosetta Motel, or anything even close.

Harry chuckled softly. “Damn, Alex is smart.”

“You got something?”

“I did a search for Rosetta plus Milwaukee plus lodging. First hit is for the Rosetta Stone-that old rock with all the languages on it. But farther down the page is the Old Stone I

I checked my watch. Lance had less than fifteen minutes to live. The clues fit, but that might have been because we were tired and hopeless and wanted them to fit.

“Where’s the address?” I asked Harry.

“It’s on Whitnall.”

Phin started the truck. “Ten minutes, if we push it.”

I didn’t see we had any choice.

“Push it,” I told him.

We peeled out of the parking lot.

CHAPTER 28

ALEX WAKES to the ringing of the hotel phone and the homey smell of copper pe

After using the facilities, Alex puts on a pair of fresh pan ties from Cyn’s suitcase, and also liberates some sweatpants and a Hootie and the Blowfish tee. Cyn’s shoes are too small, and the cop’s black leather shoes look stupid with sweats, so Alex heads out the door in only socks.

Sunrise is still over an hour away, and outside it’s cool and crisp with a wind that threatens winter. Alex digs her laptop out of the Hyundai and takes it back to the lobby, where complimentary continental breakfast is being served. Even this early there are three people milling about, reading papers, drinking coffee, pouring milk into bowls of cereal. Alex keeps her head down, bangs covering her face, and snatches a bagel and a small container of cream cheese without being acknowledged.

Back in the room she sets up at the desk and accesses the hotel’s WiFi, charging it to Cyn’s account. Then she activates the cell phone program and enlarges the window to the size of the laptop screen, which shows a live view of Lance at the Old Stone I