Prayers For Rain Part 46

"Ahm..."

"Yeah?"

"Sorry," I said.

"For?"

"Doubting you. Okay? Happy?"

"And talking down to me."

"And talking down to you, yes."

"And speaking in a derisive tone of voice," Angie said.

I glared at her.

"What she said." Bubba jerked a thumb at Angie.

Angie looked over her shoulder. "He's coming back out."

We all climbed into the van, and Bubba shut the door behind us, and we looked out through mirrored gla.s.s at the redhead as he kicked his front tire, opened his car door, and reached across the seat, pulled his cellular from the console.

"Why didn't he call people during the ride back?" Angie asked. "If the calls were important..."

"Roaming," Bubba said. "Someone's moving, it's way easier to tap into their conversation-listen in or clone the phone, whatever."

"But stationary?" I said.

He screwed his face up. "What, you mean like writing something down? What's that got to-"

"Not the paper. Stationary," I said, "as in standing still."

"Oh." He rolled his eyes at Angie. "Showing off the college again." He glanced back at me. "Okay, Joe Word of the Day, yeah, if he's 'stationary' it's way harder to cut into his transmission. Gotta go through land lines and tin roofs and antennas and satellite dishes, microwaves, the whole f.u.c.king nine if you know what I mean."

Carrottop walked back into his house.

Bubba used one finger to type on a laptop computer on the floor between us. He pulled a grimy piece of paper from his pocket. In his second-grader's scrawl, he'd listed the cell phone types and serial numbers, and then the frequency numbers for his recording devices beside them. He typed a frequency number into the computer, then sat back on the floor.

"Never tried this before," he said. "Hope it works."

I rolled my eyes and sat back against the side panel.

"I don't hear anything," I said after about thirty seconds.

"Ooops." Bubba raised a finger above his head. "Volume."

He leaned forward and pressed the volume b.u.t.ton at the base of the laptop, and after a moment, we heard Diane Bourne's voice through the tiny speakers.

"...Are you drunk, Miles? Of course it's an issue. They asked all sorts of questions."

I smiled at Angie. "And you didn't want to follow the redhead."

She rolled her eyes and said to Bubba, "One good hunch in three years, he thinks he's a G.o.d."

"What questions?" Miles said.

"Who you were, where you worked."

"How did they get onto me?"

Diane Bourne ignored the question. "They wanted to know about Karen, about Wesley, about how the f.u.c.king session notes got in Karen's possession, Miles Miles."

"All right, all right, just relax."

"f.u.c.k relax! You relax! Oh, Jesus," she said through a long stream of air. "The two of them are smart. Do you understand?"

Bubba nudged me. "Talking about you two?"

I nodded.

"s.h.i.t," Bubba said. "Smart. Oh, sure."

"Yes," Miles Lovell said. "They're smart. We knew that."

"We never knew they'd trace anything to me. f.u.c.king fix it, Miles. Call him."

"Just-"

"Fix it!" she snapped. And then she hung up.

No sooner had Miles hung up than he dialed another number.

A man answered on the other end. "Yeah?"

"Two detectives sniffed around today," Miles said.

"Detectives? You mean cops?"

"No. Private. They know about the session notes."

"Someone forgot to retrieve them?"

"Someone was drunk. What can Someone say?"

"Sure."

"She's rattled."