that fact into consideration, I could understand his finding the flashing lights and purring boxes a bit intimidating.
“It looks like some kind of network to me,” Agent Mandalay offered as I stood surveying the contents of the room. “Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you.”
Allen Roberts was sitting in a wheeled desk chair, hands cuffed behind his back, watching quietly as I nodded and continued my cursory inspection. A sudden attack of bravado overcame him when I stepped closer to a humming machine mounted in what appeared to be a recycled mini-computer peripheral’s cabinet.
“Leave that alone!” he demanded angrily as he started up from the chair. “You still haven’t shown me a warrant!”
Constance, who was positioned behind him, snapped her arm out in a blur of motion and twisted her hand into the collar of his sweatshirt as he rose. Leverage and balance being fully on her side, she jerked him back down and unceremoniously planted him hard in the seat before he could take a single step.
“Don’t do that again,” she ordered sternly, “or one of us is going to get hurt, and it won’t be me.”
“Buy a vowel, Roberts,” Ben shot back. “All we wanted ta’ do was ask ya’ a few questions. You wouldn’t even be wearin’ those bracelets right now if ya’ hadn’t acted like a damn fruitcake.”
“Screw you!” the man spat. “You still need a warrant.”
“Cool it, Roberts,” Constance instructed him evenly. “Keep it up and I’ll add assaulting a federal officer to the report.”
“Assaulting a… What assault?” he asked incredulously, “I didn’t assault anyone!”
“I don’t know about that,” she chided, “I seem to recall you hurling a coffee cup at me.”
“I did not! That’s a lie! I just dropped it and you know it!”
“Ya’know, it looked ta’ me like ya’ threw it at ‘er,” Ben volunteered with a thoughtful nod. “Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I’d definitely hafta say ya’ threw it. Yep, wingin’ a full coffee cup at an FBI agent’s not a real bright move. ‘Specially Mandalay here. She’s kinda got a reputation for bein’ a real hardass if ya’ know what I mean. Sure am glad I’m not you.”
“This is crazy!” the man sputtered. “You know I didn’t throw that cup. You’re lying.”
“Which one of us do ya’ think a judge is gonna believe?”
My friend’s sarcastic query was met only with angry silence.
“Of course, I might be willing to forget about that little indiscretion if you were to stop acting like a jerk and cooperate instead,” Agent Mandalay suggested. “You know… answer a few questions. Maybe explain what was so important in here that made you run like a scared rabbit?”
“I’d give that one some thought,” Ben expressed. “Just between you an’ me she’s not usually this forgivin’. She must think you’re okay lookin’ or somethin’, although I really can’t see why.”
“I want my lawyer,” Roberts grumbled.
“Fine with me,” Constance replied in a stoic voice.
“Not ‘zactly the choice that I woulda made.” Ben shrugged then turned and spoke to me in a clipped tone as he gestured at the rack of equipment, “Go ahead, Chief. What is all this shit?”
He was outwardly showing signs of fatigue, and I’d seen him like this before. His biggest problem, or perhaps asset, depending on your point of view, was that he often cared too much. It wasn’t unusual for him to run on little to no sleep along with inordinate amounts of coffee whenever he was working a case. Considering the previous night’s events, I knew he was running on pure caffeine-we all were. The sharp bite that now permeated my friend’s voice told me he was riding on the edge and that Allen Roberts’ attitude wasn’t helping his overall demeanor.
The simple fact of the matter was that we were all on edge. Constance had, for all intents and purposes, threatened Roberts with the assault charge. Such a tactic coming from her was overtly uncharacteristic of her by- the-book persona we all knew so well. Even Carl Deckert looked like he had aged ten years in the matter of a week.
And then there was me.
I had become so unbalanced by my own rabid fears of the history this killer was re-kindling that I was breaking one of my own cardinal rules. I wasn’t keeping myself properly grounded. While my ethereal senses continued to work in overdrive, there was no proper outlet for the by-products of those supernormal energies. Like a transformer with a short circuit, I was almost literally burning myself out. And as evidenced by the episodes Felicity had experienced, I wasn’t doing her any good either.
At this moment my gut instinct was telling me that this whole avenue was an exercise in futility that would get us no closer to solving these murders. Though I certainly understood that every lead needed to be followed, I couldn’t shake the growing impatience that was even now tickling the base of my brain.
With a sigh I moved in closer to the rack and gave the blinking lights, humming machines, and tangled wires a once over, slowly nodding my head and muttering to myself as I identified the individual components.
“It’s definitely a network,” I acknowledged Mandalay’s assessment. “But it looks like it’s also an internet domain server, which is pretty much what we expected.” I began pointing to various pieces as I named them off, struggling to keep apathy from seeping into my voice. “This is the hub, this is a router, and unless I missed my guess, this box here is the server itself. Is it okay if I touch the keyboard?”
“Hold on a minute,” Ben answered flatly. “I’ll be right back.” He returned in just over a minute and handed me a packet containing a pair of surgical gloves adding the comment, “Just in case.”
I nodded as I pulled the thin latex sheaths over my hands and inspected the black, rack-mounted unit a bit closer. On the small pullout keyboard stowed beneath it, I backspaced the misspelled “killfile” command into non- existence and tapped in my own instructions for a directory listing.
“Yeah…” I muttered and nodded as I scanned the listing that streamed across the monitor. “Yeah, looks like it’s the web server all right. Some kind of proprietary turnkey box running under a network shell program. Not the most sophisticated web host on the block, but they’re popular. A lot of small businesses and Mom ‘n’ Pop ISP’s use them.”
“Is it where the message came from?” Ben pressed.
“Probably. It’s a web server and considering that the domain the mail came from is registered to Mister Roberts here…” I allowed my answer to trail off and punctuated it with a shrug.
“Message?” Roberts blurted and tossed a puzzled glance between us. “What message? What are you talking about?”
“Whaddaya mean ‘prob’ly?’” Ben ignored him and spat back at me with heated annoyance. “Can’t you tell?”
“I mean exactly what I said!” I barked, my own voice an open wound bleeding tension into the room. “Probably! I don’t know for sure, and I’m not experienced with this particular piece of software. It’s highly likely based on the facts we have at our disposal that this is the server that the mail originated from. Beyond that, I can’t say for sure just yet. Contrary to what you’ve seen in the movies, Ben, you can’t just type in ‘give me the secret information’ and have it automatically pop up on the screen!”
My friend caught himself as he began to snarl an angry retort and left the vitriolic words unspoken. Silence rang through the atmosphere filling the room with its thickness. Almost simultaneously we grinned sheepishly at one another and shook our heads.
“Smartass,” Ben replied with a slight chuckle as he reached up to massage the back of his neck. “Sorry, white man. Can ya’ figure it out?”
“Yeah,” I nodded and smiled back. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be able to tell you for sure.”
“Are either of you going to answer me?” Roberts spouted once again. “What are you talking about? What message?”
“I thought you wanted your attorney?” Constance posed, her voice tightly wrapped in sarcasm.
Roberts shook his head and tried to look back at the petite federal agent then appealed to Ben once more, “What is this all about? Why are you guys here?”
My friend stared him down for a moment then pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and huffed out a tired sigh. “A threatening e-mail message was apparently sent from here to a Miz Kendra Miller. Last week, Miz Miller turned up dead. We came here to ask ya’ a few questions about it.”
The three of us shared an incredulous, slack jawed gaze at the man when he opened his mouth and replied with a note of bitter calm, “Dead, huh? Well, I warned her.”
