“What we’ll do,” Ma said, “is alphabetize both lists, make it easier to spot anyone who pops up on both. Don’t see anyone yet, but the lists are still fairly short. Keep trying. I’ll probably end up with two hundred names in a few days, then I’ll switch over to your Reinhart-Wexel list and we’ll hit it from that direction.”
Jeri and I left.
“Now what?” I asked when we were outside.
She shrugged. “We got the easy stuff. Now we dig harder.”
Back to her place. More computer work. She only had that one computer so I watched and learned. Then she sat me down and gave me instructions. After two hours my eyes started to cross. I got coffee and used it to wash down a caffeine tablet, blinked a few times, then gave it another hour. This was a hell of a lot less exciting than an IRS field audit. At least there I’d had a concealed weapon under my coat for when greedy disgruntled people wanted to keep what they’d worked hard to get. Only thing I was likely to shoot now was the computer.
So that was how Monday went—and Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way to Sunday afternoon at one fifty-five when Maude phoned and told us she finally got a hit. Good thing, because I was fed up to here with computer work. I’d been traveling or at Jeri’s ever since Reinhart’s hand had turned up, hadn’t been inside my house since I’d gotten my gun for Holiday, which I hadn’t needed except to back off Dell and his buddy. Friday I’d driven by and the media ghouls had cleared out. It’s hard to stake out a place for a week and sit on your hands while the world moves on. My bed had a forlorn look, wondering when I’d be back. The house looked sad, too. I gave a moment’s thought about selling it, but with single-pane windows and roof shingles fifty years old, it had become a family heirloom. It would’ve been like selling the family dog just because it farted too often and had a little mange.
Jeri and I trooped over to Ma’s office. She’d been working the Reinhart-Wexel side of things for the past three days. She looked drained when we went in, but exultant, too, now that a name had finally floated to the surface.
Sort of a name, sort of floated, as we soon learned.
“Martin Harris,” she said. “He’s on the list of registered SUV owners—a former executive director of the Nevada chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The chapter’s current secretary is one Inez Brooks, wife of Nolan Brooks, Reinhart’s campaign finance officer. Martin and Inez’s tenures at the Foundation overlap by four years, so it’s certain they’ll know each other.”
“Sounds thin, Ma,” Jeri said.
“It is thin. It’s tissue paper, but right now it’s what we’ve got. If I keep digging, odds are something else’ll come up. Connections between people are rich beyond imagining. You ever heard of ‘six degrees of separation’?”
“No. What’s that?” Jeri asked.
“Except for the Unabomber, everyone on the planet is connected to every other person by no more than six separations. A friend of a friend of a friend—like that. So it’s likely I’m going to find more connections if I keep at it a while longer, dig deeper.”
“Except for the Unabomber,” I said.
“That’s right. Teddy’s not even connected to himself.”
Jeri smiled. “So where is this guy, Martin Harris?”
“Tonopah. He retired there two years ago.”
Jeri closed her eyes and thought for a moment. “Tonopah. Not a big place, but it’s bigger than Gerlach.”
“Yep,” I said, not yet connecting two whole dots.
“Keep at it, Ma, and thanks,” Jeri said. She led me out the door and onto Liberty Street, a block west of the municipal courthouse.
She hauled out her cell phone.
“Who’re you calling?” I asked.
She held up a finger. Into the phone she said, “How would you like to go to Tonopah?” She looked up at me. “With Mort.”
Uh-oh.
“That’s right. We might finally have a lead. Uh-huh. Nope. Uh-huh. Okay, then, great. He’ll be over in about an hour.” She ended the call.
“He will, will he?” I said.
“He will, or should. And you’ll never in a million years guess who that was.”
“Whoopi Goldberg again? Man, you two.”
“Oh, so close. Take another shot at it?”
“My favorite hooker?”
“Got it in only two tries. You’ll be a flatfoot yet.”
“And we’re headed to Tonopah. Won’t get there until nearly dark. Sure you want me back in that girl grinder again?”
“She’s not fun to be with?”
“Fun, yeah. The view’s something else, but I don’t—”
“Are you tempted to go beyond viewing, Mort?”
“Well, let’s see . . . it’s hard to dredge up some of the really boring stuff that happened up in Oregon . . . okay, you said tempted, didn’t you? No, can’t say that I am.”
She wasn’t amused. She put her hands on her hips with pique in her stance. “We’ve already had this discussion. One more time and I’d like this to be the end of it, although knowing you . . . Anyway, I trust you. And I trust her—”
“Jeri—”
“Just listen, Mort. I trust her for reasons in her past that she told me in confidence and that I have no right to tell you. But she had an interesting childhood that might explain things—a little anyway. Not traumatic or horrible, but . . . interesting. She can tell you about it if she wants to, that’s up to her. Thing is, you don’t need to know, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”
“She’s pretty free about what she wears around me. Or doesn’t wear.”
“I know. It might have something to do with that thing in her past. I don’t see it as a problem. I’m not threatened by it. It doesn’t hurt us and it gives her something . . . well, something she doesn’t get otherwise. It took a while to convince her I was okay with it,
