But of course, Willy did, and now, even if he doubted Corey Browne’s reliability, he had to check out Darren Bader.

CHAPTER FIVE

Joe began the next day in Keene, New Hampshire, in the basement of the Cheshire County Sheriff’s Office. There, Fred Houston had a long, narrow, windowless office packed with computers and expensive-looking black boxes, all of which appeared to be interconnected via a tangle of thick and colorful high-speed cables.

“Welcome to the skunk works,” Fred greeted him as he entered, having been escorted there by a uniformed officer.

Joe chose an upholstered stool to sit on, not wishing to be in the way or disrupt any device whose function he didn’t understand. “I hope you got at least a couple of hours’ sleep,” he said.

Fred was moving between his two opposing counters, checking screens as he went. “Oh, I never need much. I’m doing fine. You?”

“Sure,” Joe replied, moving on. “Have your electronic gremlins been hard at work?”

“Hard at work and productive,” Fred confirmed, indicating a neatly arranged row of the variously colored and sized smartphones from the stolen Mercedes. “I concentrated on them, since they’re what most people use these days, and as usual, they’ve each been a piñata of human misbehavior.”

“A piñata?” Joe asked, amused by the reference.

“That’s how I see it. A hot car, a bunch of these, and a dead body. Each one with a story, each demanding an explanation. It’s a piñata to me.”

Joe nodded. “I like it. Did you find more like our new friend, Trevor Buttner?” he asked, young Angie Neal’s face still lodged in his memory.

“Thankfully, no,” Fred replied, adding, “He’s entered the bowels of the federal system for trafficking, by the way, which’ll make him that much easier to find if and when you dig up more linking him to the late Don Kalfus.”

“We’re not there yet,” Joe replied. “I would still like to know what the two of them had in common, though. Yet another odd loose end.”

Fred settled onto a stool himself to continue speaking. “Well, to answer your first question, the phones run the gamut from the boring to the actionable. Among the former is a banker who’s cheating on his wife with a teller, and a minor blackmail scheme featuring a car salesman who’s pressuring his manager for better perks before he squeals to the dealership’s owner. I have no clue what that means yet, but it doesn’t sound like anything for us. I did enjoy it since it didn’t seem to have anything to do with porn. I’m tiring of seeing pictures of children’s privates.”

He reached behind him and picked up a couple of the phones, still talking. He held up the first. “Slightly more interesting is a part-time teacher who’s playing middleman between his students and a pill dealer. Very low end, and I already forwarded it to the state police.”

He moved to the second one. “Here, we’re back to porn, but this time, it’s got hair on it. Adult, in other words. Creative—I’ll give them that—but of no interest to law enforcement.”