Mortal Fear. Greg Iles

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СКАЧАТЬ Drewe still possesses the tightness of skin and muscle of a woman in her twenties. Her breasts are still high, her face free of wrinkles save laugh lines. I love this about her. I know how selfish it is, wanting to preserve her physical youth. But part of me wants that. Her hair is auburn, her skin fair, her eyes green. Her beauty is not that of a fashion model (her younger sister, Erin, was the model) nor the pampered, aerobicized, overly made-up elegance of a young Junior Leaguer. Drewe’s distinctive allure emanates from her eyes. Not only the eyes themselves, which are deep set and clear, but from her brows, which are finely curved yet strong, like the ribs of a ship. What emanates from her eyes is pure intelligence. Cool, quantitative, uncommon sense.

      Drewe Cole is smart.

      Her smile widens to a pixie grin—something I haven’t seen much lately—and then she heads off for the kitchen. I take a last look at the Chicago figures and follow.

      Our house would be something of a curiosity to anyone not born into a farm family. It began seventy-five years ago as a square, one-story structure just large enough to shelter my maternal grandfather and grandmother (who married at the ages of nineteen and sixteen, respectively) and the first children they expected. But as the farm prospered and more children arrived, my grandfather began adding on rooms—first with a doggedly logical symmetry, later, apparently, anywhere he could most easily tack them on. The result is something like a wooden house of cards built by an eight-year-old. Moving from room to room often involves a sudden stepping up or down to a slightly different elevation, though since I grew up in this house, I no longer sense these changes consciously.

      The heart of the house is the kitchen. It is a long room, and too narrow. I once thought of tearing out a wall and expanding it, but a black carpenter friend told me that since the entire house seemed held to this core by some form of redneck magic, I’d do better to enjoy rubbing asses with my wife whenever we passed between the stove and the opposite counter at the same time. That turned out to be good advice.

      “Are we richer or poorer today?” Drewe asks from the sink. She is already rinsing off the chicken.

      “About even,” I say, taking a heavy cast-iron skillet out of the oven and laying it on a hot gas burner.

      Her question is perfunctory. The truth is that with ten contracts in play, which is about average for me these days, I could only—in the absolute worst contingency—lose about fifty thousand dollars. This would not seriously affect us.

      I am good at my real job.

      “Save any lives today?” I ask. My question is not perfunctory. Drewe is an OB-GYN. She delivers the babies that my father (a family practitioner) would have delivered thirty years ago. She doesn’t usually deal with car accidents or shootings, but she often handles traumatic births.

      She answers my question with a quick shake of her head and plops the chicken breasts into the sizzling skillet. I am peppering them liberally when she asks, “What about EROX?”

      She has purposefully botched the acronym, pronouncing it as a disc jockey would: E-Rocks. EROS stands for Erotic Realtime Online Stimulation. Drewe substitutes the X to emphasize the prurient nature of the network. Nine months ago she did not do this. She was as fascinated by the forum as I was, and our sex life had blossomed with her fascination. Nine months ago she spoke of EROS in a tone befitting the Greek god of love and desire.

      Now it ranks just above phone sex. Barely.

      “Something really bad happened,” I tell her.

      Drewe looks up from a can of LeSueur peas with apprehension in her eyes. Family, she is thinking. Who died?

      “Karin Wheat was murdered last night.”

      Her eyes widen. “The author? New Orleans Karin Wheat?”

      I nod. “It was on CNN. You believe that?”

      “Sure. Anybody who’s had movies made of their books—and has fans as weird as she does—is bound to rate some national airtime. I bet it’ll be on Hard Copy in an hour.”

      She’s probably right. Should I watch? I know from experience that facts will be sparse and titillation rampant. On the other hand, Drewe can’t stand more than ten minutes of Crossfire.

      “You sound really upset,” she says, eyeing me with genuine concern.

      I look away for a moment, disguising my mental stock-taking with an appraising glance at the chicken. How much to tell? “She was on EROS,” I say, not wanting to sound guilty but knowing I do.

      “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

      I look up, some defiance in my eyes. “You haven’t wanted to hear anything about EROS for months, Drewe. Karin only joined a few weeks ago.”

      She lifts her chin and studies me. “So it’s Karin,” she says finally. “You’ve talked to her online?”

      “Sure. The usual sysop guidance.”

      “Please.” She fits the pea can into the opener and drowns any reply with a grinding flourish. I go back to the chicken.

      “Have you had sex with her online?” she asks, not looking at me.

      I sigh angrily. “The woman is dead, Drewe.”

      “Jesus,” she says, and dumps the peas into a pot. “I should be on Hard Copy. ‘My Husband Fucks Famous Females Electronically.’”

      I surrender. Drewe is even angrier about EROS than I thought.

      “Do they know who did it?” she asks in a deadpan voice.

      “No.” I flip the chicken breasts. “But I think I might.”

       TWO

      Drewe and I watch Hard Copy with a mixture of fascination and disgust. Dramatic camera angles, sexual innuendo, and spooky black-and-white video of Karin Wheat’s New Orleans mansion (complete with artificially generated fog) give the broadcast a Victorian, Jack-the-Ripper feel. Drewe does not comment as the segment runs, and I find myself rehashing my dinner-table interrogation.

      I answered her incisive questions between bites of chicken and dirty rice, taking care not to set her off by revealing more than necessary. She wanted to know why I would even notice six women terminating service among five thousand subscribers. I focused on the technical side of it, explaining that these six women had been active users who suddenly disappeared from the forums yet continued paying their EROS fees, which are expensive by anyone’s standard. I mentioned nothing about blind-draft accounts or my close relationships with some of the women.

      Thankfully Drewe focused on Miles Turner and his successful attempt to prevent me from initiating an internal investigation by EROS itself. She too has known Miles since our childhood. He based his objections to an investigation on the issue of privacy—“client confidentiality” in his words—and his argument holds water. The female CEO of EROS is serious enough about privacy to insure the secrecy of each subscriber’s identity to one million dollars. This unique step in the world of online services went a long way to ensure the exponential growth of her small and costly corner of the digital world. I can only guess what kind of explosion my СКАЧАТЬ