Free Shockwave by Andrew Vachss Page A

way the current runs; I’m pretty sure it depends on the season.”
    “Fifty miles, that’s an hour’s drive.”
    “Meaning …?”
    “Meaning that even if he was one of those guys on some list, and even if he actually lived where he told the law he did, he could make the trip to where his body was found pretty quick.”
    “But there was no abandoned car—”
    “Why would there be? It’d take at least two men to throw him over, so one of them could just drive his car away.”
    “Oh.”
    “Dolly, can you get a copy of the autopsy? The photos, too?”
    “A look—a good, long look—that I can get, no problem. And I’ve got a good memory. But an actual copy … that’s another thing.”
    “There’s a way. You visit one of the nurses you’re pals with, okay? She just happens to have it all on her desk. You signal her—she has to use the restroom or something. But even if there’s a copy machine in her office, there’s no guarantee someone wouldn’t know. The way these hospitals run, they probably have all the machines connected to the billing department, so they’d know if copies had been made. Not
what
was copied, but that the machine was used.”
    “That’s about right. Now even the morphine pumps are connected to the billing department. The patient—his insurance, I mean—they pay per hit, like the pump was a slot machine. But I could probably Skype a pretty decent shot with my—”
    “No. Those things show too flat a perspective. There wouldn’t be enough detail. And you’d trigger whatever wireless connection the hospital was using.
    “There’s a better way. I’ve got a cell phone you can use. Open it up, push the ‘on’ button, then use the volume button like it was a camera lens—zoom to macro. You’ll be able to fit an entire image on the screen, or just a tiny piece, if that’s what you want to highlight. When you’ve got everything, push the ‘off’ button. That’ll store everything. This one’s got a hundred-shot chip—should be more than enough, right?”
    “Dell, where do you get these …? Ah, never mind. I just thought I knew all the different stuff you had.”
    “You did, girl. This gadget, it’s new.”
    “When did you get it?”
    “Right after you told me about the body.”
    “Oh.”
    “It’s kind of an experiment. But I tested it—it’ll work.”
    That wasn’t a lie
, I thought to myself. I would never be the master jeweler–turned–bombmaker that Luc had been, but he’d taught me as much as possible before he had to go. Passing knowledge from father to son, the way it must have been done for eons. My inheritance.
    I know Luc would have been proud of my perimeter-protector strike. It was preemptive, but not by much: a dangerous pervert had already worked himself inside, one of the boys who were always hanging around Dolly’s flock. He’d already demonstrated his love of torture and worship of fire. I knew how that would play out, but I didn’t know which of the boys was the afflicted one.
    Planting the signal senders inside the staples of a magazine I’d carelessly left in my den had been Luc’s craftsmanship, as had the explosive charge deliberately disguised as amateurism. “Very simplistic,” their expert had declared. “You can get instructions on how to build one on the Internet.”
    An unfortunate accident. Jerrald had been a “deeply disturbed” teenager who’d filled his blog with the “creative fiction” that his therapist had deemed an “outlet” for his rape-torture-kill fantasies.
    His therapist hadn’t seen the crow-raven hybrid Dolly had named “Alfred Hitchcock,” because he had such a dignified way of carrying himself. I found him in the woods behind our house—one leg had been wired around a heavy rock before the gasoline had been poured over him and ignited. It had probably taken him a long time to die.
    When he stopped coming around, Dolly figured he’d gone off to find a mate.
    When I came across his body, I