Someone knocked on the trunk lid. He tried to cry out, but only a muffled moaning fluttered his lips. He kicked again. This was a good sign. Ingles wouldn’t have knocked, knowing that he was in there.
There was a long delay. Perhaps a minute, perhaps five. He was impatient. Voices spoke to him, but he couldn’t make out the words through the layers of metal and tape.
Then suddenly, without warning, the trunk lid fell open and he was rolled out into the canal. There was only about two feet of water in the bottom of the canal, but it was more than enough to cover his head. He thrashed about at the feet of his rescuers, drowning.
He was grabbed like a fish in two powerful hands and hoisted up out of the water.
“He’s alive anyway,” said a deep male voice, the owner of the hands that roughly held him upright.
“Who is it?” asked a female voice.
A face came into his limited field of view. The face was wreathed with concern and surprise. Ray recognized her: it was that she-bitch who had chased him for days now-Agent Vasquez.
Right then Ray thought she was the prettiest woman in the world. His cheeks strained to grin against layers of silver tape.
“Vance!” said Vasquez in some surprise as they worked and cut the tape away from his body. They had decided to remove it right there in the canal, before hoisting him out. Even Johansen felt that Ray was too great a burden to carry up the slippery wet walls wearing leather-soled shoes. Good shoes that had been ruined, along with a good suit, by the canal water.
“Should we call in an ambulance?” she asked. Ray struggled to answer, but the tape around his mouth still restrained him.
Soon, his mouth was free. “I don’t need an ambulance, I don’t think. What I need is help in finding my son. Ingles might have left some clue in the house. Justin might even be on the property somewhere.”
Vasquez and Johansen exchanged glances.
“Ah!” said Ray. “Still trying to figure out how I taped myself up and threw myself to the bottom of a canal, eh?”
“It’s not that,” said Vasquez. “Ingles is dead. His body was discovered out along the main road.”
“Shit,” said Ray dully. His resurgent hopes of finding Justin fell greatly. “What about Nog and the other guy?”
Johansen jerked his head toward the front of the car as he worked to free Ray’s upper body. Ray craned his neck to follow the gesture. Nog’s flabby dead arm floated from the driver’s side window. Ray wanted to puke all over again when he thought he had been greedily drinking the canal water directly downstream from poor Nog’s body.
“Poor bastard,” he said. “He tried to save me, you know. Almost killed me in the process, of course, but still… He tried to help.”
“What other guy?” asked Vasquez.
“What?”
“You said, ‘Nog and that other guy.’”
“Oh, yes,” said Ray. “There was a third man. I never saw his face.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Um. No, I don’t think so. But maybe I could recognize his voice if I heard it again.”
“Great,” said Vasquez. “Look, Dr. Vance. You’ve been less than fully up front with us all along.”She began to question him on recent events, and he answered as best he could. He was heartened to see the believing look in her eyes. She might not have liked his story, but she was willing to believe him now.
“I must admit that Nog now seems like an even more likely suspect than you in the virus case,” she concluded.
Johansen was working on his legs now, and with his free, numb hands, Ray tried to help.
“So, am I under arrest or what? I’ll cooperate in any way that I can. All I want to do is find my son, and you can see that I’ve come close. Will you help me?” he asked, without much hope. Surely they would at least want to drag him to a cell. He had resisted arrest too long and there were simply too many unexplained bodies around.
Vasquez and Johansen glanced at one another. “It is true, there are many mysteries here, with only your story to go on… for now,” she said. “Any thinking agent would drag you back to a cell without a qualm.”
“But, we do need your help with our case,” added Johansen.
“With the virus?”
“That would be nice, but that’s not our case any longer,” said Vasquez. “We were- relieved from that case. Our case now is the search for your son.”
Ray’s eyes got big and he grinned as he worked one foot free of the sticky mass of tape. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to be out of that damned tape.”
He looked from one to the other with a new perspective. “You’ve got Justin’s case?”
“Yes, your wife asked that we take it on,” smiled Vasquez.
Soon, they were all struggling up the canal embankment. Johansen helped Ray, who could hardly walk after spending a night with his legs taped together.
Vasquez slipped even though she was wearing flats. Johansen darted a hand down to steady her. “You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said.
When they all reached the top, they took a moment to dust themselves off and strip the last bits of tape from Ray.
“I think the key angle is to find this third man,” said Johansen.
“Right, but there is another possible answer,” said Ray.
“What?”
“Ingles told me he sent me an e-mail message. A message that would release my boy.”
Vasquez frowned at that. “I don’t know. Even if that message was sent, the entire internet is failing. I doubt it could have been delivered.”
Ray stared at her. The enormity of what she had just said sunk in. Had Nog really managed to do it? He hardly noticed as Johansen snapped a set of handcuffs on his wrists.
… 6 Hours and Counting…
“Can we at least try Ingles’ machine?” asked Ray.
Vasquez nodded, following his logic. “Right. Even if the message was lost on the net, a copy should still be on his hard drive.”
“As long as he didn’t erase it,” added Johansen.
“All right,” sighed Vasquez. “Look Vance, I’ll give you an hour, then we have to take you in. There have been two murders and what looks like a third. Johansen, phone in for back-up would you? Someone has to get Nog and that car out of that canal and do all the forensics on it.”
Johansen nodded and snapped open his phone. They all climbed into their car and drove down the dirt road toward the house.
“The virus is still raging on the net then?” asked Ray.
“Nothing seems to stop it. And if you’re right, and the author is now smashed in the bottom of the canal, then it’s going to take even longer to piece together a solution. The damned thing keeps changing its profile. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen.”
“Nog was truly a genius,” agreed Ray. “He told me something of his work before he died.”He related to her what Nog had told him about the self-evolving software he had written.
“If it’s true, then he’s created a new nightmare we’ve never encountered before,” said Vasquez thoughtfully. “And I, for one, am ready to believe it. There will be a number of federal agencies that will want that source code. We’ll have to put in some special court orders concerning national security issues on Nog’s computers.”
“That’s Verr’s case now,” said Johansen gently.
“We’ll ask for the court orders anyway,” snapped Vasquez. “No one will bitch if we help make sure no foreign power gets their hands on this bomb.”
