His name was Irving Nailsworth and his official position in the San Juni-pero Sheriff’s Department was chief technical officer. He was five-foot-five inches tall, weighed three hundred and thirty pounds, and had taken to wearing a black beret when he perched in his web. Early on, Nailsworth had seen that nerds would rule the world, and he had staked out his own little information fiefdom in the basement of the county jail. Nothing happened without the Spider knowing about it. He monitored and con-trolled all the information that moved about the county, and before anyone recognized what sort of power that afforded, he had made himself indis-pensable to the system. He had never arrested a suspect, touched a firearm, or set foot in a patrol car, yet he was the third-highest-ranking officer on the force.
Besides a taste for raw data, the Spider had weaknesses for junk food, Internet porn, and high-quality marijuana. The latter was Theo’s key to the Spider’s lair. He put the plastic Baggie on the keyboard in front of Nails-worth. Still without looking at Theo, the Spider opened the bag and sniffed, pinched a bud between his fingers, then folded the bag up and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.
“Nice,” he said. “What do you need?” He peeled the marshmallow cap off a Hostess Sno Ball, shoved it into his mouth, then threw the cake into a wastebasket at his feet.
Theo set the bag of snacks down next to the wastebasket. “I need the autopsy report on Bess Leander.”
The Nailgun nodded, no easy task for a man with no discernible neck. “And?”
Theo wasn’t sure what questions to ask. Nailsworth seldom volunteered information, you had to ask the right question. It was like talking to a rotund Sphinx. “I was wondering if you could come up with something that might help me find Mikey Plotznik.” Theo knew he didn’t have to explain. The Spider would know all about the missing kid.
The Spider reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out a Twinkie. “Let me pull up the autopsy.” His fat fingers flew over the keyboard. “You need a printout?”
“That would be nice.”
“It doesn’t show you as the investigating officer.”
“That’s why I came to you. The M.E.‘s office wouldn’t let me see the report.”
“Says here cause of death was cardiac arrest due to asphyxiation. Suicide.”
“Yes, she hung herself.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I saw the body.”
“I know. Hanging in the dining room.”
“So what do you mean, you don’t think so?
“The ligature marks on her neck were postmortem, according to this. Neck wasn’t broken, so she didn’t drop suddenly.”
Theo squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the data. “There were heel marks on the wall. She had to have hung herself. She was depressed, taking Zoloft for it.”
“Not according to the toxicology.”
“What?”
“They ran the toxicology for antidepressants because you put it on the report, but there was nothing.”
“It says suicide right there.”
“Yes, it does, but the date doesn’t corroborate the timing. Looks like she had a heart attack. Then she hung herself afterward.”
“So she was murdered?”
“You wanted to see the report. It says cardiac arrest. But ultimately, cardiac arrest is what kills everyone. Catch a bullet in the head, get hit by a car, eat some poison. The heart tends to stop.”
“Eat some poison?”
“Just an example, Crowe. It’s not my field. If I were you, I’d check and see if she had a history of heart problems.”
“You said it wasn’t your field.”
“It’s not.” The Spider hit a key and a laser printer whirred in the darkness somewhere.
“I don’t have much on the kid. I could give you the subscription list for his paper route.”
Theo realized that he had gotten all he was going to get on Bess Leander. “I have that. How about giving me any known baby-rapers in the area?”
“That’s easy.” The Spider’s fingers danced over the keyboard. “You think the kid was snatched?”
“I don’t know shit,” Theo said.
The Spider said, “No known pedophiles in Pine Cove. You want the whole county?”
“Why not?”
The laser printer whirred and the Spider pointed through the dark at the noise. “Everything you want is back there. That’s all I can do for you.”
“Thanks, Nailgun, I appreciate it.” Theo felt a chronic case of the creeps going up his spine. He took a step into the dark and found the papers sitting in the tray of the laser printer. Then he stepped to the door. “You wanna buzz me out?”
The Spider swiveled in his chair and looked at Theo for the first time. Theo could see his piggy eyes shining out of deep craters.
“You still live in that cabin by the Beer Bar Ranch?”
“Yep,” Theo said. “Eight years now.”
“Never been on the ranch, though, have you?”
“No.” Theo cringed. Could the Spider know about Sheriff Burton’s hold over him?
“Good,” the Spider said. “Stay out of there. And Theo?”
“Yeah?”
“Sheriff Burton has been checking with me on everything that comes out of Pine Cove. After the Leander death and the truck blowing up, he got very jumpy. If you decide to pursue the Leander thing, stay low-key.”
Theo was amazed. The Spider had actually volunteered information. “Why?” was all he could say.
“I like the herb you bring me.” The Spider patted his shirt pocket.
Theo smiled. “You won’t tell Burton you gave me the autopsy report?”
“Why would I?” said the Spider.
“Take care,” Theo said. The Spider turned back to his screens and buzzed the door.
Molly
Molly wasn’t so sure that life as Pine Cove’s Crazy Lady wasn’t harder than being a Warrior Babe of the Outland. Things were pretty clear for a Warrior Babe: you ran around half-naked looking for food and fuel and occasionally kicked the snot out of some mutants. There was no subterfuge or rumor. You didn’t have to guess whether or not the Sand Pirates ap-proved of your behavior. If they approved, they staked you out and tortured you. If they didn’t they called you a bitch, then they staked you out and tortured you. They might release starving radioactive cockroaches on you or burn you with hot pokers, they might even gang-rape you (in foreign-release directors’cuts only), but you always knew where you stood with Sand Pirates. And they never tittered. Molly had had all the tittering she could handle for the day. At the pharmacy, they had tittered.
Four elderly women worked the counter at Pine Cove Drug and Gift, while above them, behind his glass window, Winston Krauss, the dolphin-molesting pharmacist, lorded over them like a rooster over a barnyard full of hens. It didn’t seem to matter to Winston that his four hens couldn’t make change or answer the simplest question, nor that they would retreat to the back room when anyone younger than thirty entered the pharmacy, lest they have to sell something embarrassing like condoms. What mattered to Winston was that his hens worked for minimum wage and treated him like a god. He was behind glass; tittering didn’t bother him.
The hens started tittering when Molly hit the door and broke titter only when she came to the counter with an entire case of economy-sized Neosporin ointment.
“Are you sure, dear?” they kept asking, refusing to take Molly’s money. “Perhaps we should ask Winston. This seems like an awful lot.”
Winston had disappeared among the shelves of faux-antidepressants when Molly entered the store. He wondered if he should have ordered some faux-antipsychotics as well. Val Riordan hadn’t said.
“Look,” Molly finally said, “I’m nuts. You know it, I know it, Winston knows it. But in America it is your right to be nuts. I get a check from the state every month because I’m nuts. The state gives me money so I can buy whatever I need to continue being nuts, and right now I need this case of ointment. So ring it up so I can go be nuts somewhere else. Okay?”
The hens huddled and tittered.
“Or do I need to buy a case of those huge fluorescent orange prelubricated condoms with the deely-bobbers on the tip and blow them up in your card section.” You never have to get this tough with Sand Pirates, Molly thought.
The hens broke their huddle and looked up in terror.
“I hear they’re like thousands of tiny fingers, urging you to let go,” Molly added.
Between the four of them it only took ten minutes more to ring up Molly’s order and figure her change within the nearest dollar.
As Molly was leaving, she turned and said, “In the Outland, you would have all been made into jerky a long time ago.”
Fifteen
Steve
Getting blown up had put the Sea Beast in a deep blue funk. Sometimes when he felt this way, he would swim to the edge of a coral reef and lie there in the sand while neon cleaner fish nipped at the parasites and algae on his scales. His flanks flashed a truce of color to let the little fish know that they were safe as they darted in and out of his mouth, grabbing bits of food and grunge like tiny dental hygienists. In turn, they emanated an electromagnetic message that translated roughly to: “I won’t be a minute, sorry to bother you, please don’t eat me.”