Twisted Vine Part 6

"No, thanks." Bateman watched her as she flipped back over and began her sit-up routine. "I don't know how you make yourself do those all day."

"Keeps me in shape for the gym."

"What gym is this?"

"Fight Club down on Kalakaua."

Bateman was silent. He had to have enough physicality to have made it through the Academy's rigorous tests. She took pity on him. "You can come down sometime. It's good for our tech skills for us to stay in shape, keep a balance."

"I'd like that."

Sophie resumed her sit-ups, and he drifted away to his station.

IT was like that. Everyone had their quirks-and now she'd challenged Bateman to something that he might even consider a date, which would be awful. Sophie felt a stab of loneliness. She'd definitely felt a tingle the other day as Alika demonstrated a hold, his steely arm around her waist . . . She suppressed the feeling by sitting on the ball in a V shape, carefully balancing, holding her legs straight out for a count of a hundred and fifty. Finally, trembling, she did some stretches, refilled her big water cup, and settled into her c.o.c.kpit, all her screens humming.

She cracked her supple fingers and opened up the entry screen of DyingFriends.

Copying each piece of information as she developed it, she planted a dummy IP address in case the system admin was watching for law enforcement and began a profile: Shasta McGill, aged forty-three, sick with leukemia and not expected to live. Two children, divorced. Username ShastaM, pa.s.sword a transparent combination of numbers that were a fictional birth date. She imported a photo from the FBI stock photo archives of a wan-looking pretty blond woman.

All these details she saved into a text box and sent to Waxman per his request.

When her profile was complete, she hit Enter and was admitted to DyingFriends. Within the home screen were various topic areas, chat threads, and pages with links and resources. So far, nothing more than morbid, she thought, surfing a catalog of burial choices, featuring everything from caskets to crematoriums.

She supposed, for the dying, it must be comforting to be able to freely talk with other dying people. She cruised through the thread discussions: "When do I tell the kids I'm dying" to "I want out early."

She zeroed in on that one. After all, their cases had involved suicide, and their two victims had met each other here.

The chat conversation started off lively, with a debate about the worth of such a choice and petered out with one respondent, CancerCurmudgeon, saying, "You have to live out the number of days G.o.d gives you."

She typed in a response: "Hi, I'm Shasta, and I've got terminal leukemia. I'm sick and miserable and, frankly, I don't see the point of many more days."

She felt a twinge, the phantom pain of her own losses and the depression she battled with exercise. This wasn't easy, imagining herself in this woman's shoes.

CancerCurmudgeon responded. "Make your peace with G.o.d and accept his will. You'll have more peace."

"G.o.d has nothing to do with cancer, and if he does, I have a few words to say to him," ShastaM typed back.

"G.o.d is sovereign, and we are eternal beings. It's this life and cancer that are illusions."

"I don't buy that. I believe in reincarnation. This life is a revolving door, and I want out." Sophie had to pause to consider what Shasta's position was-and she realized she didn't really know her own. It brought a hollowness to the pit of her stomach. She'd been so busy trying to live, she'd never really considered death.

"You'll die, and it will be too late. You'll burn in h.e.l.l, and I'll be laughing from heaven."

"I get to believe what I believe," ShastaM said, even as Sophie wondered how she'd so quickly locked horns with a "troll" on a forum. They were everywhere on the Internet, and dying or not, they were opinionated, rude, and hiding behind anonymity. Just as she was, she reminded herself.

Sophie abandoned that thread, hoping she'd planted some bread crumbs that would lure the system admin. She dropped other suicidal hints on a few more threads, then posted her e-mail in yet another chat room, asking for "emotional support."

That done, she navigated around the site until she spotted "DyingFriends in Your Area." She plugged in her zip code, and a list of ident.i.ties popped up, along with how recently they had been active and their zip codes. She copied the zip codes and names into another window to track down. DyingFriends had at least twenty Hawaii members.

Armed with that information, she logged back out of the site and then set to work tracking down the ident.i.ties of the Hawaii members. Their zip codes and fake names weren't much to go on. She'd have to lure them into revealing more.

Sophie tracked the names to the e-mails listed and sent each of them a sweet introductory e-mail with a picture of the pale, smiling, pretty face of dying Shasta McGill, appealing for friends.h.i.+p outside the site in the big lonely town of Honolulu, where she'd moved to live her last days in paradise.

Sophie wondered how often that really happened. She felt her worldview s.h.i.+ft just a tiny bit-lonely people, waiting to die, were all around and invisible. It made her wonder if she was just a few cancer cells away from being one of them.

The depression and loneliness Sophie'd battled on and off squeezed at her from the edges of her mind, and she had to look down at the tattoos on her arms to remind herself she was living life on her own terms. In freedom, with courage.

Setting up an online sting was like an elaborate form of cooking to Sophie, ending in a meal that brought her targets to the table. Cooking in Thailand was a lengthy production she'd watched their servants perform: first, harvesting the food. From the garden, farm, or sea came the raw ingredients. Then was.h.i.+ng, hulling, seasoning, marinating, and prepping. After that, individual mini cooking of elements of the dish, and then the collection of all the ingredients into a cohesive whole, and finally, the presentation.

Right now, her "meal" was at the hunting, gathering, and prep stage. She'd left all those lures out there. Hopefully, a few would respond to the dummy e-mail address she'd set up. Then she could track their computers, find their addresses, and send Ken and Lei to check them out.

She switched back to digging into the innards of the black Mac that had belonged to Alfred s.h.i.+maoka. She tried not to think of his sad end in the SUV with his beloved dog barking a few feet away.

Chapter 11.

Lei pulled into the Youth Correctional Facility. She held up her ID badge at the gate, and Vinnie, the guard, gave her shaka and waved her through. She was a weekly visitor here, a fact unknown to anyone but Marcella, who'd declined to come as she was having dinner with Marcus Kamuela at her parents' restaurant in Waikiki.

Keiki and Angel sat on the pa.s.senger seat of the truck. They loved the drive over the Pali to Kailua, where the youth jail was snugged up against the wall of a green mountain. A slight breeze came down the valley, and Lei cracked the windows and left Keiki in the truck in the cool blue of evening.

Carrying Angel, who wore her therapy dog vest, Lei went through the security admission steps and finally arrived in the group rec room, where she visited the girl she'd captured last year during a burglary spree. She'd forged a permanent bond with the orphaned Consuelo Aguilar.

The pretty Filipina girl bounded up off the battered couch where she'd been lounging with some other adolescents. Lei set the wriggling, ecstatic little Chihuahua down, and Angel ran to Consuelo. Several girls waved to Lei from the couch. "t.i.tas" all, the tattooed tough girls cl.u.s.tered around Consuelo, exclaiming and petting Angel's little domed head as the seventeen-year-old clasped the dog close.

Lei sat on one of the molded metal stools bolted to the floor. The corrections officer, a st.u.r.dy woman they called Aunty Marcie, came up and greeted her. Her graying hair brushed her waist in a braid as thick as Lei's wrist. "So good you come fo' see her," Aunty Marcie said. "Consuelo, she look forward to you all week."

"She jus' like see her dog." Lei had impulsively agreed to care for Angel last year when Consuelo was taken into custody, and so far she hadn't regretted that decision for a minute.

"No, she talk about you all the time. She always in one better mood after you come."

"That's good. Me too."

"You make all the girls feel good, like they can be somebody because you come," Aunty Marcie said, her brown eyes warm. "These kids, they need role models."

"Thanks, eh." Lei looked up at the woman. "I'm sure you help all you can."

"I do, but I only one CO, and sometimes I gotta bust them for something. You young, you one big-shot FBI agent, and still you come every week and bring the dog. It means more than you think."

"Okay." Lei was embarra.s.sed, and Aunty Marcie walked off to break up an argument brewing in a far corner.

She sat quietly waiting at the round Formica table, and as she always eventually did, Consuelo came and sat across from her. The girl had left Angel with the other teenagers on the couch. She tucked glossy hair behind a small ear and smiled. "Hi."

"Hi. How are things this week?"

"Pretty good. Almost done with my English cla.s.s. When I finish, I'll be ready to get my diploma." Consuelo wore the bright orange overalls with a natural elegance that belied their coa.r.s.e message. Her big dark eyes flashed something like defiance as she looked at Lei. "I'm going to college."

"'Course you are. I never had a doubt."

"Hey. I could just be a deadbeat, go back to a life of crime." Consuelo pushed her bottom lip out in a mock pout.

"Ha. You know you never were a normal criminal."

"Well, did you know my English project is my memoir?"

"I knew your lawyer was negotiating with all those Hollywood people interested in it."

"I know I can't profit from it, which is fine . . . But I like the challenge of writing." She produced the introductory pages and handed them to Lei. Lei had noticed the stark beauty of the girl's writing when she read her journal last year, and now the opening pages of the memoir brought a lump to her throat.

"Wow, Consuelo. You really have a way with words."

"So that's what I'm going to major in. Journalism."

"That will make Wendy Watanabe happy." They grinned at each other. Watanabe was a ruthless but pa.s.sionate TV reporter, and she too visited Consuelo regularly. Her fundraising efforts had procured Consuelo the best defense lawyer in the state.

"Yeah, and now I've got Wendy doing writing workshops with the girls here. She's organized editorial help for us. We're all writing our memoirs, not just me."

Lei glanced up and looked around the room at girls of every size, shape, and shade-all troubled teens who'd hit the wall of the law. "I bet there are some good stories here." She felt her own chest tighten with a moment of memory-if her aunty Rosario hadn't taken her in, she might well have ended up here herself.

There but for the grace of G.o.d go I, she thought. It was something her father, converted to Christianity in prison, often said.

She set the pages back down on the table. "These are very good. But then, you knew that."

"Thanks. It's my chance to explain everything, and I don't want to miss it. Mr. Fernandez is sort of acting as my agent; he said I can choose any charity to give the proceeds to. That's perfect. I can always write something else and make money on it."

"That's the spirit. So do you hear from Tyler?" Tyler, Consuelo's boyfriend, had been subject to some tougher sentencing and was incarcerated in California.

"We write. But he's kind of depressed. We're just friends now."

Angel had fought her way free of the clutches of the other girls, and she trotted back to Consuelo. Lei watched their affectionate reunion.

"Do you still ever think of suicide?" she asked suddenly. Her mind had wandered back to the case.

Consuelo looked up, her dark eyes hard. "What do you think? I'm in prison, and I've got a record that will follow me when I get out. I'm broke and my parents are dead."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so abrupt. I have a case that involves suicide, and I'm trying to understand it better." Lei had had her own brushes with those dark thoughts, but they'd led in other directions-to self-injury. She looked down at the faint white lines of scarring on the insides of her arms.

Consuelo stroked the little dog, who'd flopped on her back in the girl's lap. "I wanted to die when I was first captured. I thought my life was over."

"I remember."

"I actually thought I could will myself to die. But that's not how it works, is it? Every day I kept waking up. Now I just let the thoughts pa.s.s by. I observe them. Dr. Wilson taught me how. Thoughts are not reality. They're just thoughts. It's helped me to realize they aren't the truth."

"Told you she's a good therapist." Dr. Wilson, Lei's former therapist, had worked with Consuelo on and off since her capture. Lei thought about the Hale case. "If you'd been feeling that way, and you'd had someone agree to help you commit suicide when you couldn't do it yourself for some reason, would you have taken advantage of that?"

A long beat pa.s.sed while Consuelo stroked Angel's belly, scratched under her tiny pointed chin. Finally she looked up at Lei. "I wouldn't be here today."

"Thanks," Lei said. "This actually helps me with a case."

"Weird convo, but glad I could help."

"Back to your rooms; it's the boys' time!" Auntie Marcie called, and with good-natured grumbling, the girls got up from the couches. Consuelo stood, handed Angel to Lei.

"Thanks for coming."

"You're welcome. Thanks for loaning me Angel." They smiled at each other, and Consuelo straightened her uniform and walked back to her friends, hips swinging, s.h.i.+ny black hair bouncing.

The girl had style, there was no doubt.

Lei waved goodbye to Aunty Marcie and left, a little surprised at the glow of happiness she felt to be in Consuelo's life, to be making even a little difference with these tough teen girls through her limited contact.

On the way back over the steep and winding ribbon of the Pali, Lei put her Bluetooth in her ear and speed-dialed Stevens.

"Twice in one week," he said. "I'm going to get spoiled."

"I know. I missed you. Just got done visiting Consuelo. She's working on her memoir."

"That's going to be worth reading."

"I think so too. Wouldn't be surprised if someone wants to make a movie out of it. Anyway, she's doing well."

"Was there a doubt? The girl's tough."

"Not really. You know, she kind of gave me food for thought on my case." Lei told him about the situation with the suicides. "She confirmed that if she'd had someone to help her die, she would have. And just think of these suicides. If there's some sort of a.s.sistance going on-many of them will be dying too soon. Or when there might have been a solution of some kind."

"Are you sure there isn't just one *angel of death' offing people who say they want to commit suicide?"

Lei considered this new idea, tapping her fingers on the top of the steering wheel as she navigated a steep curve. Far away below, the ocean gleamed under a silvering of moonlight, Honolulu spread out before it in a net of lights. "I don't think we considered that scenario because of the print of one victim appearing in the scene of the other one."

"Well, maybe the doer knows there are enough inconsistencies to draw some attention. The print could be some sort of misdirection."

"I don't know. Really, all we have are two dead bodies with anomalies-nothing conclusive-suicide notes that are genuine, and both victims having members.h.i.+ps on this fishy website. I'm not even sure the case is hanging together at this point. Ang seems convinced, though. What would you think of a program that could mine all the different law enforcement databases for commonalities in a case? Nationwide?"

"Impossible," Stevens said. "Too much security, too many different and incompatible databases. But if it could be done, and the interagency problems resolved, incredible."

"That's what Ang's working on. Girl's some sort of genius with computers."

"Awesome potential. You fixing to have another friend?"

"Don't know. I like her, but she keeps to herself."

"Speaking of keeping to yourself, and being sick of it, have you given any more thought to what we're going to do when I'm free?"