like that. We’ll go see him, we’ll turn over the letters—”
“Letters? I only found the one.”
Hodges thinks Ah, shit, then regroups. “The letter and the copy, I mean.”
“Oh, right.”
“If I find the guy, it’s the job of the police to arrest him and charge him. Schron’s job is to make sure we don’t get arrested for going off the reservation and investigating on our own.”
“That would be criminal law, isn’t it? I’m not sure he does that kind.”
“Probably not, but if he’s good, he’ll know somebody who does. Someone who’s just as good as he is. Are we agreed on that? We have to be. I’m willing to poke around, but if this turns into police business, we let the police take over.”
“I’m fine with that,” Janey says. Then she stands on tiptoe, puts her hands on the shoulders of his too-tight coat, and plants a kiss on his cheek. “I think you’re a good guy, Bill. And the right guy for this.”
He feels that kiss all the way down in the elevator. A lovely little warm spot. He’s glad he took pains about shaving before leaving the house.
11
The silver rain falls without end, but the young couple—lovers? friends?—are safe and dry under the blue umbrella that belongs to someone, likely a fictional someone, named Debbie. This time Hodges notices that it’s the boy who appears to be speaking, and the girl’s eyes are slightly widened, as if in surprise. Maybe he’s just proposed to her?
Jerome pops this romantic thought like a balloon. “Looks like a porn site, doesn’t it?”
“Now what would a young pre–Ivy Leaguer like yourself know about porn sites?”
They are seated side by side in Hodges’s study, looking at the Blue Umbrella start-up page. Odell, Jerome’s Irish setter, is lying on his back behind them, rear legs splayed, tongue hanging from one side of his mouth, staring at the ceiling with a look of good-humored contemplation. Jerome brought him on a leash, but only because that’s the law inside the city limits. Odell knows enough to stay out of the street and is about as harmless to passersby as a dog can be.
“I know what you know and what everybody with a computer knows,” Jerome says. In his khaki slacks and button-down Ivy League shirt, his hair a close-cropped cap of curls, he looks to Hodges like a young Barack Obama, only taller. Jerome is six-five. And around him is the faint, pleasantly nostalgic aroma of Old Spice aftershave. “Porn sites are thicker than flies on roadkill. You surf the Net, you can’t help bumping into them. And the ones with the innocent-sounding names are the ones most apt to be loaded.”
“Loaded how?”
“With the kinds of images that can get you arrested.”
“Kiddie porn, you mean.”
“Or torture porn. Ninety-nine percent of the whips-and-chains stuff is faked. The other one percent . . .” Jerome shrugs.
“And you know this how?”
Jerome gives him a look—straight, frank, and open. Not an act, just the way he is, and what Hodges likes most about the kid. His mother and father are the same way. Even his little sis.
“Mr. Hodges, everybody knows. If they’re under thirty, that is.”
“Back in the day, people used to say don’t trust anyone over thirty.”
Jerome smiles. “I trust em, but when it comes to computers, an awful lot of em are clueless. They beat up their machines, then expect em to work. They open bareback email attachments. They go to websites like this, and all at once their computer goes HAL 9000 and starts downloading pictures of teenage escorts or terrorist videos that show people getting their heads chopped off.”
It was on the tip of Hodge’s tongue to ask who Hal 9000 is—it sounds like a gangbanger tag to him—but the thing about terrorist videos diverts him. “That actually happens?”
“It’s been known to. And then . . .” Jerome makes a fist and raps his knuckles against the top of his head. “Knock-knock-knock, Homeland Security at your door.” He unrolls his fist so he can point a finger at the couple under the blue umbrella. “On the other hand, this might be just what it claims to be, a chat site where shy people can be electronic pen-pals. You know, a lonelyhearts deal. Lots of people out there lookin for love, dude. Let’s see.”
He reaches for the mouse but Hodges grabs his wrist. Jerome looks at him inquiringly.
“Don’t see on my computer,” Hodges says. “See on yours.”