Page 22

CHAPTER 22

R ose and I had driven back to Rocky Start at dawn. Both fires had gone out and the cottage had gotten chilly despite our best efforts to keep warm under the big comforter—really good efforts—so we’d finally packed up and headed back. Once home, we’d showered together, always fun and warm, then gotten dressed and had breakfast with Poppy, just like normal people with a kid and a dog and a cat. That was weird, but it felt good, and that was enough for me.

Then Poppy went to school, and Rose opened the shop, and I started my day, too. Which meant clearing up some loose ends with our resident snoops.

It was a Rocky Start tradition that Lionel and Dottie Ferrell flipped a coin every morning to decide which one would deliver both mail routes, Tennessee and North Carolina, while the other opened up their respective post office. Their acrimonious divorce procedures had played hell with that, but Rose had told me they’d reconciled.

That meant a flip of the coin was going to decide which one I saw as I walked down State Street toward the dueling post offices, across the street from each other. I was somewhat relieved when the OPEN sign was in the Tennessee window, which meant I’d drawn Lionel. He was less dangerous than Dottie.

I walked in, turning the sign to CLOSED behind me and locking the door. Lionel was nowhere in sight so I dinged the bell on the counter. After a short delay, Lionel appeared from the back blinking away sleep. He did not look happy to see me.

“Yeah? What do you want, Reddy?”

I tried to remember why he held some sort of grudge toward me, but I was juggling too much other more important stuff. “Did you run a background check on this new doctor?”

“Jacqueline Quill?” He nodded. “Yeah. Dottie put the Eye on her.”

I waited a few seconds, but he didn’t say anything further. “Well?”

Lionel shrugged. “She didn’t mention anything to me, so I don’t think there were any red flags.”

“I’d like to see the report. She did a report, right?”

“I guess.” Lionel sighed as if this were a great imposition on his napping in the back of the post office time.

He looked past me and saw I had already turned the sign. “Come on.”

I went around the counter, violating some federal law, I’m sure. He led me into the back, which was crowded with carts and tables for sorting mail. He flipped up an advertisement for American flag stamps and placed his palm on an electronic scanner. After a beep, a section of the ceiling lowered on hydraulic arms, revealing steps. We trooped upstairs to the SCIF that Herc had placed in Rocky Start. The trapdoor closed behind us.

The first thing I noticed was that the place still smelled slightly of smoke from the fire. One of the consoles was scorched, but the others were on. The screensavers were no longer hot women but random images of pretty countryside; Dottie was back.

Lionel sat at a keyboard and typed. The screen cleared, then a document appeared. “How much detail do you want?”

“If there are no red flags,” I said, “just the overview.”

“Jacquiline Quill. Born in Nashville. Went to med school at University of Tennessee, Memphis. Did her residency at UT Knoxville. Emergency medicine. She spent six years working in Nashville at Vanderbilt, then she began working freelance as a locum tenens.”

I shook my head. “What?”

“A traveling doctor, fills in wherever there’s a need.” He shrugged. “Always emergency rooms. She must like adrenaline. Pays good but otherwise, nothing special.”

She went around the country saving people’s lives, but Lionel was the type of person who didn’t consider that special.

“Why does she travel?”

“That’s the job,” Lionel said.

“Seems it would be easier for her to stay in place. Easier on her kid.”

Lionel couldn’t care less. “She must home school.”

“How is she related to Sid?”

“They share a grandfather on her father’s side.”

“Husband?”

“Widow.”

“How did her husband die?”

“Hit and run drunk driver. Driver was caught, but he had money and influence and managed to get off on a technicality.”

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“Shit happens,” Lionel said, which pissed me off, but I decided not to make a case of it.

I asked a bunch more questions, but it became apparent there really was nothing sketchy in Jacqueline Quill’s background other than sharing the same last name with Sid.

I pulled out the film canister and opened it. Took out the roll of microfilm.

“Old school,” Lionel said as I handed it to him.

“Can you get me a legible, translated copy of this?”

Lionel unscrolled a portion and held it up to the light. “No one’s used microfilm since?—”

“Can you do it?”

“There’s a lot here to download once I scan it. Probably tens of thousands of pages of stuff. After download, I’d have to run it through the AI translator.”

“Can you do it without Herc knowing?”

Lionel nodded. “I can keep it in-house. Why do you care about old Russian stuff?”

“Speaking of Russians,” I said. “They’re tapped in on your feed.”

“No way,” Lionel immediately replied.

“There’re a couple Russians in town, staying at Nice Funerals. You can ask them. One is Alexei Dmitri. Former KGB. Spent some time in the Gulag. I want a report on him.”

“Since when do I work for you?” Lionel demanded.

I stared at him.

“Yeah, okay,” he said.

“And can you tighten up your line so no one can dip in?”

“I’m using the latest encryption software Herc sent us,” Lionel said. “I assume he’s using the latest from the National Security Agency.”

Too much assuming going on.

“Can you change it?”

“To what?” Lionel asked. “An older version? They’ve all been broken.”

“You’re sure Herc is using the latest, most secure?”

Lionel blinked as if the question made no sense. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

That was a question I’d been pondering and the possible answers weren’t good. “Can you cut it?”

“Our outside feed?” He was acting like I’d asked him to amputate one of his testicles.

“Yes.”

“Herc would go ballistic.”

“Why?”

Lionel blinked. “What?”

“Why does Herc care? He’s running the deepest black ops the U.S. government has. Why the hell does he care about Rocky Start?”

“He gave us the SCIF,” Lionel said, which wasn’t an answer.

“Why?”

“He’s Herc.”

That answer was right up there with “It’s Rocky Start.” A platitude that kept the status quo. Lionel was having a hard time thinking beyond his little box, which is why snoops like him and Dottie passed information to analysts who determined which of the information was actually usable intelligence. Different brains.

“Cut it,” I said. “We don’t need it.”

“Then how am I going to check on Dmitri?”

“Do that. Then cut it.”

“Herc is going to be pissed.”

“He’ll call me. I’ll deal with him.”

I left the post office and headed back to Oddities.

Herc was definitely going to call when he lost his feed, and that would give me the opportunity to ask him why he needed one while pointing out that the Russians had hacked it.