“Mr. Vespa called. He wants to see you tonight.”
“What about?”
Cram shrugged.
She looked off again.
“You ready for some more bad news?” Cram asked.
She turned to him.
“Your computer room. The one in the back.”
“What about it?”
“It’s bugged. One listening device, one camera.”
“A camera?” She couldn’t believe this. “In my house?”
“Yeah. Hidden camera. It’s in a book on the shelf. Fairly easy to spot if you’re looking for it. You can get one at any spy shop. You’ve probably seen them online. You hide it in a clock or a smoke detector, that kind of thing.”
Grace tried to take this in. “Someone is spying on us?”
“Yup.”
“Who?”
“No idea. I don’t think it’s the cops. It’s a little too amateur for that. My boys have given the rest of the house a quick sweep. Nothing else so far.”
“How long…” She tried to comprehend what he was telling her. “How long has the camera and-listening device, did you say?-how long have they been here?”
“No way to know. That’s why I dragged you out here. So we could talk freely. I know you’ve been hit with a lot, but you’re ready to deal with this now?”
She nodded, though her head was swimming.
“Okay, first off. The equipment. It’s not all that sophisticated. It only has a range of maybe a hundred feet. If it’s a live feed, it goes to a van or something. Have you noticed any vans parked on the street for long periods of time?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. It probably just goes to a video recorder.”
“Like a VCR?”
“Exactly like a VCR.”
“And it has to be within a hundred feet of the house?”
“Yep.”
She looked around as if it might be in the garden. “How often would they need to change tape?”
“Every twenty-four hours tops.”
“Any idea where it is?”
“Not yet. Sometimes they keep the recorder in the basement or garage. They probably have access to the house, so they can fetch the tape and put in a new one.”
“Wait a second. What do you mean, they have access to the house?”
He shrugged. “They got that camera and bug in somehow, right?”
The rage was back now, rising, smoldering behind her eyes. Grace started looking at her neighbors. Access to the house. Who had access to the house? she asked herself. And a small voice replied…
Uh-uh, no way. Grace shook it off. “So we need to find that recorder.”
“Yes.”
“And then we wait and watch,” she said. “We see who picks up the tape.”
“That’s one way of doing it,” Cram said.
“You have a better suggestion?”
“Not really.”
“Then, what, we follow the guy, see where it leads?”
“That’s a possibility.”
“But…?”
“It’s risky. We could lose him.”
“What would you do?”
“If it were up to me, I’d grab him. I’d ask him some hard questions.”
“And if he refused to answer?”
Cram still wore the sea-predator smile. It was always a horrific sight, this man’s face, but Grace was getting used to it. She also realized that he was not intentionally scaring her; whatever had been done to his mouth had made that become his permanent, natural expression. It spoke volumes, that face. It rendered her question rhetorical.
Grace wanted to protest, to tell him that she was civil and that they would handle this legally and ethically. But instead she said, “They threatened my daughter.”
“So they did.”
She looked at him. “I can’t do what they asked. Even if I wanted to. I can’t just walk away and leave it alone.”
He said nothing.
“I have no choice, do I? I have to fight them.”
“I don’t see any other way.”
“You knew that all along.”
Cram cocked his head to the right. “So did you.”
His cell phone went off. Cram flipped it open but did not speak, not even a hello. A few seconds later he snapped the phone shut and said, “Someone is pulling up the drive.”
She looked out the screen door. A Ford Taurus came to a stop. Scott Duncan stepped out and approached the house.
“You know him?” Cram asked.
“That,” she said, “is Scott Duncan.”
“The guy who lied about working for the U.S. attorney?” Grace nodded.
“Maybe,” Cram said, “I’ll stick around.”
• • •
They remained outside. Scott Duncan stood next to Grace. Cram had stepped away. Duncan kept sneaking glances at Cram. “Who is that?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Grace gave Cram a look. He got the hint and headed back inside. She and Scott Duncan were alone now.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Duncan picked up on her tone. “Something wrong, Grace?”
“I’m just surprised you got out of work already. I figured it’d be busier at the U.S. attorney’s office.”
He said nothing.
“Cat got your tongue, Mr. Duncan?”
“You called my office.”
She touched her nose with her pointer, indicating a direct hit. Then: “Oh wait, correction: I called the United States attorney’s office. Apparently you don’t work there.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“How enlightening.”
“I should have told you up front.”
“Do tell.”
“Look, everything I said was true.”
“Except the part about working for the United States attorney. I mean, that wasn’t true, was it? Or was Ms. Goldberg lying?”
“Do you want me to explain or not?”
Now his voice had a little steel. Grace gestured for him to continue.
“What I told you was true. I worked there. Three months ago this killer, this Monte Scanlon, he insisted on seeing me. No one could understand why. I was a low-level lawyer on political corruption. Why would a hit man insist on talking only to me? That was when he told me.”
“That he killed your sister.”
“Yes.”
She waited. They moved toward the porch furniture and sat down. Cram stood in a window watching them. He let his gaze wander toward Scott Duncan, hang there for a few heavy seconds, survey the grounds, go back to Duncan.
