38

Although he intended eventually to split to a better world, there were things about this one of which John Falkirk approved.

In this age of ever-increasing state surveillance of its citizens, even a town of forty thousand, like Suavidad Beach, had cameras monitoring traffic at all major intersections, in municipal parks, as well as in and around public buildings. Local authorities archived the video for sixty days or six months or a year, but it was transmitted in real time to the National Security Agency's Utah Data Center, where it would be forever available, filed under the community's name and accessible by date.

A year earlier, Foot-Long Frankfurt had planted a rootkit in the NSA's computer system, allowing him and Selena to enter by a back door and swim through its ocean of data without drawing the attention of the IT-security forces. Together they had tracked Jeffrey and Amity Coltrane from Constance Yardley's neighborhood through the heart of town.

Selena had edited sequential bits of video into a twitchy stream of images. Falkirk stood behind her, watching her computer screen, as the radio repairman and his mouse-keeper brat eventually made their way to the town library on Oleander Street.

"They were there for eight minutes," Selena said. "And here they come."

Coltrane and his daughter exited the library and turned north on Oleander. He seemed to be carrying a book. A traffic cam at the first major intersection showed them turning east on Oak Hollow Road. They were heading home to their funky house on Shadow Canyon Lane, about a mile from where the last camera lost track of them.

"For some reason, Ed Harkenbach entrusted the key to Coltrane," Foot-Long Frankfurt said, "and Coltrane used it, and they were under attack by the Bestpet when they ported back to Prime. I'd bet my dick on it."

"Winning that bet," said Falkirk, "would be like taking home the throwaway from a Brith Milah."

Selena laughed, and Foot-Long asked what a Brith Milah was, and she said, "The Jewish rite of circumcision."

To his credit, Foot-Long laughed and said, "Man, I owe you for that."

Falkirk wished he hadn't said such a thing, not because he gave a shit about hurting Frankfurt's feelings, but because it might be mistaken for camaraderie, might suggest he was one of them. He was not. He was singular. He'd known he was better than all of them, better than the ruck of humanity, had known it for twenty-one years, ever since he was fifteen, when he murdered a classmate at boarding school and got away with it, attracting no suspicion whatsoever.

Without further comment, he stepped out of the motor home and walked to a black Suburban parked nearby. Vince Canker sat behind the wheel, Louis Wong in the front passenger seat. Both men were eating deli sandwiches, washing them down with beer.

Falkirk slid onto the back seat. "We're going to move hard on Coltrane. But not for hours yet. Finish your meal. I need to put the best team together and take the bastard when he's least expecting it. We'll slam him when he's sleeping, after midnight."

Canker, who had the body of a mob enforcer and a face hard enough to break the ram of a junkyard auto compacter, believed that he possessed a low-burning psychic power that one day would suddenly flash brighter. He said, "I got a funny thing going here, like a far voice from the Other Side, from beyond the veil, you know, telling me this here is the night, this here is the time, we find the key tonight."

Wong swallowed a wad of sandwich. "You heard a voice before."

"Not this here voice. No. This is another voice."

"You recognize who it is?"

"It's real faint, but I think it's my mother's voice."

"Your mother's dead?"

"She'd have to be, wouldn't she, if she's on the Other Side?"

"It's just you never mentioned she's dead."

"It was only a week ago, a shitty thing. Opioids."

"An overdose, huh? Sorry, man. That's a tragedy."

"It is what it is. She wasn't big on self-control."

"Only a week on the Other Side and she's trying to reach you."

"She was always a talker, never shut up. Death won't likely change that."

On his new world, with the key to everything at his service, Falkirk would have a good chance of becoming not only the richest man on the planet but the ruler of all. If he achieved totalitarian power, he would make stupidity a crime, and conversations like that between Canker and Wong would be sufficient evidence to impose the death penalty.