get out of there. Soon we were back inside the cramped examination room, which had become as familiar to us as our bedroom—at either apartment.
Dr. Lee, looking professional in her white lab coat, surveyed Ruby underneath the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent lighting and didn’t take long to make her assessment.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asked. Her worried tone concerned me.
“I’m okay,” Ruby said.
“You don’t look very well,” Lee said.
“It’s just a bug,” Ruby said. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
Lee made a “hmmm” sound as her practiced eyes continued to study Ruby’s face. She looked over at me. “John doesn’t look so great, either,” she said.
Ruby nodded toward me. “Yeah,” she said. “It seems like we’ve both caught the same thing.”
Back at the apartment, Ruby held fast to her suspicions about David Clegg, and I couldn’t make her think otherwise.
“Who else could have known that you were talking to Clegg?” Ruby asked. “It had to be the guy David arrested—the guy in the back of his police car. Think about it, John.”
“I have thought about it,” I said. “And we’ve got to find Uretsky without alerting the police. Clegg is the only person who can do that for us.”
“By doing that, you could be alerting Uretsky. That’s what I’m saying.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“What should we do?” I asked, tossing my hands in the air. “Just sit and wait for him to call us with the next crime to commit? Do we sit, or do we fight?”
“You don’t know the consequences,” Ruby said. “You’ll be violating the rules of his game.”
“It’s a risk,” was all I said.
“Well, I don’t like our odds,” she said.
I called Clegg, anyway, while Ruby went to the bedroom to rest. I wasn’t worried about Uretsky overhearing my conversation. Ruby had smashed what I believed to be the only listening device planted in the apartment. If there were leaks, some way for Uretsky to learn of my inquiry, I would be found out regardless if I contacted Clegg by phone or in person. What I wanted was an answer to my question, and I wanted it now.
Clegg sounded glad to hear from me. We chatted about his divorce, the apartment in Hingham he had found, and Ruby’s health prognosis. He didn’t bring up climbing, but I could hear in his voice that he had a trip planned. It’s like a jealous intuition that I have. I used to get that same squeak of excitement before departing on a major expedition myself.
I got to the point. “I need a favor,” I said.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“I’ve got a problem with one of my game players.”
“What sort of problem?”
“He’s just harassing some other players. Nothing too horrible.”
“Kick him off,” Clegg said.
“He’s threatening to hack me,” I said.
I had thought for all of six seconds about what lie I’d tell, and this one seemed to work just fine.
“So what can I do?” Clegg asked.
“Tell me if he’s ever been arrested for hacking.”
“I could look him up if you give a name and address.”
I gave Clegg the name Elliot Uretsky, spelled it for him, too, along with the address I gave UniSol to help steal the same man’s identity. Clegg keyed in the information, and I waited.
I sat at the kitchen counter, refreshing YouTube on the laptop, watching my video stats skyrocket. In the time it took for Clegg to come back on the line, another fifty thousand people had witnessed me—ski mask and all—save a man from choking to death while a little old lady beat me silly with her purse. Hell, I’d have watched it, too.
“I got nothing,” Clegg said.
“Nothing,” I repeated.
“No priors. No arrests. No speeding tickets. This guy is clean. So if he’s a hacker, he’s never been busted for committing any computer crime. At least not in Massachusetts.”
“Is that the only place you can check?”
“I didn’t look for outstanding warrants,” Clegg said. “That’s in LEAPS—our Law Enforcement Automated Processing System.”
“Can you look?”
“Sure thing, buddy. Hang on.”
Clegg put me on hold. Instead of Muzak, the Boston PD played PS announcements about drinking and driving and the importance of wearing a seat belt. Ginger wove in and out between my legs like a slinky slalom skier while I waited.
“Lucky cat,” I said, scratching her head. “You don’t have anything to worry about. All you have to do is be a cat.”
Ginger meowed as if she understood and agreed wholeheartedly. Within a span of five minutes, I had become jealous of both Clegg (for climbing) and a cat