moment, a real person answered.
'Do you have the number for the accounting department?' she asked.
The operator was perfectly happy to give it to her, and then, somewhat to her surprise, added, 'Since it's month-end, there are probably a lot of people still down there. Would you like me to put you through now?'
'Yes, please!' Jennifer replied, trying not to sound as surprised as she felt. If she could confirm Sleighbow's authority to hire her, she could be on this case tonight.
A few more hours to chalk up to the Romulus account wouldn't hurt.
The phone rang through, and someone picked it up. Jennifer explained who she was, and why she was calling, and the young man at the other end replied, 'I'm just a programmer, man, but hold on a sec, I'll get the supervisor.'
This was going better than she had any reason to expect.
Five minutes later, she hung up the phone, still blinking in pleased surprise. Not only had she confirmed that she had been hired by someone with the authority to do so, but the supervisor of accounting had laughed, and told her he'd seen the account with her name on it opened just before quitting time.
She pinched herself, just to make certain this wasn't some kind of dream.
Then again-
She sobered, suddenly. There were usually reasons for things going this well, early in a case. It meant that the case itself was going to be a bitch.
Well, if it's going to be that bad, I'd better get on it tomorrow early, while my luck is still running. She closed down computer and modem, picked up her purse, and headed back out. And meanwhile, I'd better make a good grocery run, because I bet I won't have time for one once this heats up.
As she passed him in the living room, Grandfather looked up, and gave her one of his Patented Inscrutable Expressions.
Now what in the hell was that all about? she wondered. With him, it could be anything from toilet paper on my shoe to the fact that I'm about to walk into a trap and he doesn't feel like telling me about it.
As she closed the front door behind her and headed for the truck, the shrill klee-klee-klee of a bird screamed out above her head. She looked up.
There was her Spirit Animal, a kestrel, sitting on the phone line above her head. The little falcon, a female by her markings, stared down at Jennifer and screamed again.
'That's easy for you to say,' Jennifer retorted, inserting her key into the lock. 'You don't have to live with him!'
_CHAPTER FIVE
rod calligan had not expected so many reporters to show up; he would have thought by now, after a day had passed, that the explosion was old news. He managed to send the last of the reporters packing, turned away to his car, and straightened his tie, just in case there was a camera still operating somewhere around. This was a hell of a way to spend a hot afternoon, standing out in the direct sunlight, courting a sunstroke. One of the advantages of being the boss was setting your own hours, and he liked to take his afternoons off. It was well past the time he'd usually have been home, and he was damned tired of nosy reporters demanding answers to questions they had no right to ask. What did his wife have to do with this, anyway? He was angry, but he hoped he had not showed anything other than contempt for the 'reporter' in question. This had not been in the plan, and he had not been prepared to face all those inquisitors. Still, he thought he'd handled it all pretty well. He'd managed to field their questions cautiously and carefully, and he thought he might have succeeded in planting the idea that the explosion had been the fault of terrorists. He hadn't actually come out and said that terrorists did it, but he'd talked about the vandalism and sabotage at laboratories that used animals, and the spiking of trees in logging areas. He'd even managed to work in the supposed trouble with Indians in almost the same sentence, so without actually coming out and accusing anyone, he figured plenty of people would put two and two together for themselves. With luck, one or two of them would be reporters; there was a right-wing regional rag that would probably report things that way. There were plenty of people around here who thought Indians were trash; they'd be only too happy to believe anything bad about them. The neo-Nazis and skinheads would probably start rumors for him.
The jerk at Romulus had sure been a pain, though. His regular man had been away from his desk when he'd called in the bombing, and that Sleighbow was a suspicious bastard. He had as many questions as the reporters. 'Why didn't you say anything about these threats before?' 'And when, exactly, did you start getting phone calls?' 'Did you save the letters?' 'Why didn't you report this to the police?'
He thought he'd gotten through that all right, but he'd better make sure. Before he headed home, maybe he'd better check up on the state of things at Romulus. It didn't do to have loose cannon rolling around on the deck. He got into his car, started it and the A/C, and dialed the contact number on his cellular phone, savoring the cool sterility of the air-conditioned breeze coming from the vents.
This time his man was in.
Calligan let out a sigh of relief, although if John hadn't been there, this time he could simply have hung up. There had been a certain amount of urgency about getting the explosion reported to Romulus; now he could afford to take things the way he had planned them. He explained what had happened, quickly. 'I got assigned to a guy named Sleighbow, a real company man. He gave me some trouble. What's he doing about this?'
'Call me from your office,' the man said. 'I'll have to check his desk. I saw him leave, so that shouldn't be a problem. Just let it ring until I pick up.' There was a click, and Calligan hung up quickly. No use paying for minutes of cellular for nothing but an open line.
Calligan stared out the windshield at the remains of the bulldozer, a little smile on his face, then drove the short distance to the site office, a portable trailer. He had an auxiliary office and phone in there. He'd be alone; the secretary was long gone, since he'd sent everyone at this site home early. There would be no problems with being overheard. He wouldn't have that security at home.
The window in his office looked out over the same area of course, though from a different angle. There were still police swarming all over the remains of the dozer, but it looked to him as if they had gotten everything they were going to. After all, they'd had all night and all this morning to glean clues. And there were a couple of cars and trucks parked off on the shoulder, their occupants peering out the windows at all the activity. Bunch of ghouls, he thought with contempt. They were no better than the bloodsucking reporters, who wanted to know 'how extensive the injuries were.'
He allowed his smile to become a grin now that there was no one to see it. The explosion had worked perfectly, all according to plan. The dynamite came from the company stores, a shed most of the construction workers had access to. The detonator came from there, too. And the garage-door opener came from K-Mart. There was nothing to trace back to him that couldn't lead back to anyone on the crew as well.
His hand went to his inside jacket pocket, and he took out a palm-sized bundle of what seemed to be soft, mahogany-brown leather. It was wrapped around other things, bones, feathers, who knew what; old, brittle, and dark with age. He put it on the blotter and fondled it as he picked up the phone with his other hand. He left it alone just long enough to dial the number of his contact, and then went back to caressing it.
His good-luck piece, he thought. And grinned again.
It had been a real piece of good luck, finding this thing, although it was not the sort of object he would normally have touched, much less picked up and taken with him. After acquiring it, he'd visited one of the Indian museums to try and identify it. He thought it might be a fetish bundle; it looked like the ones in the museum. Whatever it was, finding it had given him the key to making this whole scheme work.
He still remembered, clear as day, when he'd found it. . He had come across it right after the flood on Mingo Creek-the one his Mingo development had caused. Not that he'd ever told anyone. He hadn't really expected any problems, at least, not that soon. Just because he'd paid off the team doing the environmental-impact statement to ignore that little drainage problem that Sunnyvale was going to produce-
Of course, they hadn't dared admit that, or they'd have been in just as much trouble as he would. So everybody had kept their mouths shut, and the worst thing that had happened was that a bridge had gotten washed out along with some creek bank, and the Army Corps had extended their flood-control project on Mingo to go a bit above Owasso. No big deal. Too bad that bridge was gone-there wasn't enough money in the county budget to cover replacing it, so the hicks in the sticks would just have to do without it. It didn't make a lot of difference to
