Читать книгу Measure Of Darkness - Chris Jordan, Chris Jordan - Страница 19

Chapter Eleven

Where It Gets Complicated

I return to the residence walking on air.

Alice Crane, Super Investigator, able to successfully interrogate reluctant neighbors, discover leaf-obscured sandboxes and enter tall buildings in a single bound. Okay, the neighbor wasn’t exactly reluctant, but still, it was my idea and I came away with an eyewitness account that proves beyond doubt, to me at least, that Joseph Keener was the father of a small child. Considering the circumstance, I shouldn’t feel this happy—a kid is missing, what is there to be happy about?—but the success of the mission makes me want to punch the air and shout yes! just like they do in the movies, only Mrs. Beasley might see me and throw a stale muffin at my head. Not that her baked items ever last long enough to go stale, but you get the idea.

Be cool, girl. Like it’s all in a day’s work.

Right, right, let me give it a try. Trying, trying. Nope, never happen. I’ll never be cool. Not unless cool involves shouting, “I did it! I did it!” while bounding up the stairs to the command center.

Only to find the big room hushed and empty.

For one horrible moment I imagine that the mysterious assault team returned in my absence, abducting everyone but me. And then light footsteps come padding along the hallway carpet and boss lady pokes her head inside the door.

“You screamed?” she says, and beckons me to follow.

She and Teddy have been hunkered down at his main computer terminal, all agog over some new spy program developed by our young software genius.

“It’s so simple that it’s almost beautiful,” boss lady enthuses, acting very much like a proud mother. “And it’s functioning perfectly.”

“Simple also means limited,” he reminds her. “We can look but not touch.”

“It’s a kind of invisible, undetectable window into their system,” Naomi explains, attempting to share. “Planted by Jack’s operative at Keener’s company, QuantaGate.”

“More like a reflection of a window,” Teddy corrects. He manages to look embarrassed and pleased at the same time. Then, as if to deflect attention away from his fauxhawked self, he goes, “Alice? Um, what happened out there?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just proved that the dead professor had a kid, that’s all. With a mysterious Chinese lady.”

That finally gets their attention.

“Details,” boss lady demands.

“I should save it for the next case briefing.”

“Don’t be cute,” she says, giving me The Squint. The Squint means we’ve had our fun but joke-time is over, wisecracks are no longer appreciated. It’s boss lady turning off the friendly switch and getting serious and making you serious, too. And so I give her the play-by-play, including the demon cats and the sandbox, and Professor Keener calling the child his “keyboard kid.”

“Odd that he would call him that,” she says. “I wonder what it means, exactly. It must mean something.”

Riffing, I say, “Maybe if you’re a weird genius that’s a term of endearment. Anyhow, the point is, whatever their names are, the mother and child used to visit frequently, but the visits stopped two years ago. Haven’t been seen since, at least by the neighbor. They stopped coming around. Does that mean the mother broke up with the professor, possibly returned to China?”

“I suppose anything is possible at this point. Whoever this woman is, Keener kept her off the grid. Randall Shane never mentioned anything about the mother being Chinese.”

“He didn’t have time to mention much of anything before the windows got kicked in.”

“Good point. Give Jack and Dane a call, let them know about the boy.”

“Will do.”

Boss lady nods, frowning to herself. “I’d love to know what the ‘keyboard kid’ reference means. We’ll try Googling the phrase, but off the top of your head, what first comes to mind when you hear the word keyboard?”

I shrug. “Computers, I guess. And pianos.”

“Pianos?”

“Pianos have keyboards.”

“Right! Of course they do. Hmm. Interesting.”

Without formally ending the conversation—a habit she has when distracted—Naomi wanders away, looking even more thoughtful than usual, which is sort of like saying a saint looks even more religious when the halo blinks on.