Chosen Prey

then said, “I’m not a freak.”
    “Nobody said you were,” she said.
    To Lucas, mumbling, Carr said, “There’s a possibility . . . that he ships stuff to an underground website in Europe—Holland, I think—called donnerblitzen451.” He spelled it, then said, “You need some kind of code to get in. Putting in the wrong code too many times may wipe the site. Maybe your guys can do something with it.”
    “Donnerblitzen like the reindeer,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah. Four fifty-one like the Ray Bradbury book, Fahrenheit 451,” Carr said. “Four fifty-one is supposed to be the burning point of paper, so I think that’s Morrie’s little joke. If you put the wrong number into the website—more than a couple of times, anyway—it burns.”
    “Why would he do that?” Lucas asked. “If somebody found it by mistake . . .”
    “How are you gonna find donnerblitzen451 by mistake? It’s not a public facility—it’s his. It’s his warehouse, I think. You put a high-res photo file in there, somebody wants something special, you go to your warehouse, you order it sent, the site sends out the file, the recipient prints it. . . . There’s no way to get back to Morrie. He has a photo negative for ten minutes. After he develops it, he scans it, he burns the neg, and the picture is nothing but a bunch of numbers somewhere in Europe.”
    “That’s interesting,” Lucas said. “But you don’t know the code to get in.”
    “No, but I’ve seen the setup before, and I think it’s booby-trapped. If you try to get in, you better know what you’re doing, or the place is gonna burn.” He nodded, as if turning over the problem in his mind. “I’ve given the whole thing some thought. Tried to figure out what the code was—tried to catch him going out to the site. I even thought about installing a keystroke recorder in his computer, but . . . I never did.”
    “All right, this helps,” Lucas said. “If you let on to Ware for one minute what you told us, our deal is off. And you still better get a lawyer.”
     
    W HEN L UCAS WAS done with Carr, he sent him back to the couch and said to Rie, “We need to get the code for that website before we turn Ware loose. If he gets five minutes with a computer, he can kill the site.”
    “How’re we gonna do that?” she asked.
    “Call the feds, I guess. They’re supposed to have some big-deal computer forensics operation going on. Maybe they can help.”
    “You want to do that?”
    “Yeah, I’ll take care of it,” he said. “And . . .” He turned his head at movement outside. “Hey—I think we’ve got customers.”
    A man and a woman had gotten out of an old Chevy and were walking toward the door.
    “They’ll see the broken door,” Rie said.
    “I’ll get it.” Lucas hurried over to the door and pulled it open, as though he were leaving.
    The man was just stepping up onto the sidewalk, and stopped when he saw Lucas. “Hey. Is Morrie around?”
    “Yeah. He’s in the back,” Lucas said. “Who’re you?”
    “We’re the talent,” the woman said. She was young, but her face was tough, touched with worry lines—a street kid. She looked straight at Lucas, challenging him. Maybe eighteen, Lucas thought. Maybe not.
    “Come on in, talk to Carolyn,” Lucas said.
    The two stepped past Lucas, crowding into the small reception room. Rie, behind the desk, stood up as Lucas stepped back inside and pulled the door shut. The woman said to Rie, “We’re the talent. Morrie said we’re supposed to meet him here. We’re a couple of minutes early.”
    “That’s all right,” Rie said. She held up her badge. “We’re the police. Morrie’s being raided.”
    The woman said, “Oh, shit,” and pivoted, looking at the door.
    “I’d just run you down if you got past me,” Lucas said, leaning back against it.
    “Fuckin’ . . .” The word came out as a harsh grate, then swung up to a whine. “We haven’t done anything.”
    “No, but we’re asking people to cooperate. I’d like to see a little ID, a driver’s license.”
    “I think we need a lawyer,” the man said. He was in his late twenties, Lucas thought.
    “You might,” Lucas agreed. “And you’ll get one. But first I want to see some ID.”
    Lucas took the man’s license, read the name, and Rie noted it down. The woman said, “I don’t drive.”
    “Oh, horseshit. You drove that car over here,” Lucas said. “Give me your goddamn license.”
    The woman stared at him