Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,41

see. I wouldn’t have recognized anything special about any of them.

“Had she shown it to you?”

He shook his head.

“Then how—”

“She told me about it,” he said. “Described the wood. It was the rarest of all the wood she’d ever come across. Worm-eaten 500 year old tiger maple. She said the pattern was breathtaking.”

“But how could you know for sure?”

“I would know,” he said. “Besides, Jesse said she put Shannon’s name on it at the bridge on the neck. On that little metal buckle.”

“Maybe she hadn’t gotten around to that part, yet.”

“You have to do it to get as far along as she was. So it was done. Plus, she always put the name on the inside of the body as well.”

“And you didn’t find it?”

He shook his head.

“You looked everywhere?”

He gave me a look that I’d seen a tiger on the Discovery Channel give a springbok just before he killed it. And ate it.

“Did you tell the cops?” I said.

“Not yet.”

“You should tell them right away.”

“Does it mean anything?”

I stood to go.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Twenty-four

The Spook reflected that one of the great things about having worked for the CIA was having access to its infinite supply of handy gadgets. Despite the constant complaining on Capitol Hill regarding lack of budgets and depleted funds, the Spook personally had never seen cutbacks or depleted resources in his area of expertise. In fact, never once had he requested a certain new technology and had it denied due to lack of money.

Take, for instance, the handheld modem and miniature computer screen. The public sector had never seen anything like it – and wouldn’t for years – but the Spook had gotten it quite some time ago. It was a true miracle of modern technology. It was about half the size of a normal laptop and only weighed about a third of what you’d expect.

You just got a dial tone on the phone, clamped the circular receptor over the mouth piece, hit ‘receive’ on the keyboard and an internal modem automatically connected you to any one of several hundred available clandestine mailboxes via the Internet. The connection itself was encrypted and routed through no fewer than a hundred breakers and transferring stations making it virtually impossible to find out the original location of the source.

He waited a moment for the connection to establish and instantly an encrypted message arrived which was then descrambled. The message itself was gibberish unless you knew what it meant. If one were to break the code of the message, a task in and of itself that would require hundreds of man hours, it would have no understandable meaning.

It was the best way for the Spook to communicate with his customers. And it provided the absolute faceless interaction he needed to not just do business, but to stay alive.

And, best of all, it had been provided by the government of the United States.

Life was good.

Now at the corner of Gratiot and 6 mile, the Spook used the technology to access his e-mail account. He had twenty-one new messages, all of them junk mail. With every one of his mailboxes, he made sure he got on the list of annoying solicitors who spray the Internet with sales messages like a dog with a dysfunctional bladder. Should anyone decide to take an interest in his account, the SPAM would make their job all that much tougher.

The Spook scanned down the list until he saw the message he was looking for.

It read: “Thank you for your interest in Midwest Condos, Inc. We’re happy that you’ve arrived and are interested in looking into our offerings. We have an especially nice unit near the Village that suits your needs. Let us know your expected arrival time and upon completion of the enrollment requirements you’ll qualify for a cash bonus! Units are moving faster than anticipated.”

That’s the beauty of junk mail, no one really pays any attention to them. And even if someone were to glance at it, they wouldn’t really know what it means.

To the Spook, however, it was all very simple. Midwest Condos was his Grosse Pointe client – the same one he’d done some work for a few years ago. And the “unit” near the village was clearly a reference to someone his client had been keeping an eye on from the ordeal a couple years back. His client had decided not to have the Spook take care of the target as, at the time, it was deemed unnecessary. Now, apparently,