see myself working full-time, either before or after.” Her attitude was not simply one of warning Kate, but of leading up to something.
“So you want me to rob a bank?” Kate asked lightly. “Or are you and Jon cooking up a little computer fraud and you want a couple of tips?”
“Uh, no. I think I’ll avoid anything that would land one of us in jail. I hear they’re bad places to raise children. No, I was thinking that we might have to sell this house, move someplace cheaper.”
It was not entirely unexpected; in fact, it was a suggestion Kate had made any number of times over the years since Lee had inherited the property following the death of her authoritative and strongly disapproving mother, but it still sent a sharp pang of regret through her. Objectively speaking, it was worth a small fortune, but Kate had put herself into this house, her sweat and her commitment, and she loved it as she never thought she would love a mere building. She also knew without question that they were both well and truly spoiled for any lesser house they might find to replace it.
She kissed Lee and smiled at her. “I’ll miss the view of the Bay,” she said, and left it at that.
Al’s return call found her about to step into her own shower. She turned off the water and sat down on the toilet in front of the glowing bars of the ancient wall heater.
“Jani said you needed to talk.”
“Look, Al, is Jani okay with me?” she asked bluntly. “She sounded pissed off.”
“Jani?” Al’s surprise was all the answer she needed. “No, she’s not pissed off with you. With life in general, maybe, and with hormones and a dry cracker diet in particular, but she’s good with you.”
“I’m glad.”
“We’re both waiting for the second trimester to get under way. It usually settles down then.”
Hawkin the expectant father, Kate thought in amusement, and wondered idly
“Martinelli, is that all you phoned to ask?”
“No, Al, sorry. Didn’t get much sleep last night. Do you have a minute?”
“Go ahead.”
“Okay. Last night we had Roz and Maj over, and got to talking about religion and the conservative Right with their anti-gay programs and the bombing of abortion clinics. And then Jon mentioned that Web site that everyone was talking about when the doctor back East was shot, the Web site that lists doctors and clinic directors, their families and home addresses, all kinds of things nobody would want a nut to get ahold of.”
“The hit list.”
“Exactly.”
“Do I see where this is going?” Al asked slowly, and Kate knew him well enough to hear the excitement in his voice. She hugged herself to keep warm.
“You do. It took me forever, but I found one that is a kind of mirror image. It’s called Womyn of the EVEning—that’s w-o-m-y-n, and the e-v-e in evening is capitalized. It’s only been online since January, which may be why nobody’s heard about it. It isn’t one of those governmental lists, notifying residents they might have a sex offender as a neighbor. This one’s a list of suspects who are known to beat their wives, abuse kids physically or sexually, or rape women. Each guy is given a case history, his arrest and conviction record, and a list of the things he’s suspected of that he didn’t get taken down for because the courts weren’t able to prove anything further. You know the routine—tainted evidence, a withdrawn statement by a victim or witness, circumstantial evidence without direct corroboration, that sort of thing. There were a couple of plea bargains for lesser offenses. God knows where all their information came from, though it looks to me like somebody’s getting into things they shouldn’t.”
“Hackers?”
“Or an inside source.”
“How many on the list?”
“Two hundred fourteen names.”
“
“Makes you think, doesn’t it? It’s compiled by a woman who seems to be somewhere in Nebraska. People send her names, and if they match her criteria—that’s what she calls it—she adds them to the list, with their phone numbers and addresses. I’ve sent her an imaginary case, to see what she does with it, what kind of checks she runs.”
“Are any of our—” Al started, but Kate was already there.
“They’re all on it. All three.”
Al was silent, then said what was on both their minds.
“That takes it out of our hands for sure. Have you called Marcowitz yet?”
“My next call, after I talked to you.”
“The feds’ll be embarrassed that you found it first,” he said, pleased at the idea.
“I thought I might point that out, if they try to cut us out of the loop completely.”
“Blackmail, Martinelli? Not nice.”
“Just doing my job, Al.”
“Sure you are. Find anything else interesting on the list?”
“Don’t know about interesting, but there’s going to be a hell of a lot of work there. But Al? There are a bunch of connecting sites, things like legal information for victims, do-it-yourself PI work, how to go underground, that kind of thing. I haven’t been through all of them yet, but I had two interesting hits. One of them was a self-defense site that talked about, among other things, buying and using various kinds of taser.” Hawkin grunted in reaction. “The other—frankly, I don’t know what to think. Roz Hall’s church has a Web site two links away.”
Chapter 16
KATE HAD NOT BEEN inside Roz and Maj’s house since the previous Thanksgiving. It looked as if she was not about to enter it today, either, since there was no response to either doorbell or knuckles. She had thought she was early enough to catch them, and Roz’s red Jeep stood in the driveway, but the house was empty. Try again later.
She had her car door open when Maj’s boxy white BMW rounded the corner, lights on and wipers going against the morning drizzle. It signaled its turn to an empty street and pulled sedately into the drive. While Kate waited for the doors to open, she reflected that either cars were no indication of personality, or else a certain degree of incompatibility was no bad thing in a relationship: Whereas Roz drove a big, battered, once-flashy but still new vehicle that already had a dozen political stickers superimposed in layers on the back bumper, Maj stuck to the car she had bought new twelve years before, a car as immaculate and scrupulously maintained as its owner, which usually wore a single bumper sticker, scraped off and changed two or three times a year at Maj’s whim, its message either puzzling or humorous, if not both. Her most recent one, Kate noticed, declared that real women drive stick. The BMW, needless to say, had a manual transmission.
The car doors opened and the two women got out, followed by a large black dog, which shook itself damply, spotted Kate, and launched itself down the sidewalk toward her as if she was either a long-lost soul mate or a mortal enemy. Before Kate could decide between pulling her gun or a swift retreat into her car, Roz spoke sharply and the dog skidded to a halt, casting Kate a longing glance before it returned to Roz’s side.
“You’re up and around early,” Roz declared. “Were you looking for us?”
“I thought I missed you. I should’ve called first.”
“Maj just dropped Mina off at school and circled around to pick me up from my run. I don’t think you’ve met the newest addition—this is Mouton, also known as Mutton, or Mutt to his friends.”
“Mutt?”
“What can I say? It’s what he answers to.”
“Because he’s a mutt?”
“No,” said Roz, bending down to take the dog’s damp head between her hands and rub it vigorously back and forth. “It’s because he’s just an overgrown lamb,” she crooned at him, to his ecstasy.
Mutt was mostly black Lab with the addition of something from the fluffier end of the gene pool, and he did look a bit like a sheep. A wet, smelly, wriggling sheep who, when his mistress had released him, wanted nothing but to bound up into Kate’s arms but settled for washing the back of her outstretched hand with an enthusiastic
