The Demands of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

channel, maybe you can do so in a way that is subtle.”
    “Hide the real information in personal information, I get it.” We looked at each other again as I answered.
     
    “Then there is just one remaining question. Do you want to do it?”
    Maria signaled me hard with her eyes.
    “Yes Professor Hoffman, let's do it,” I said. "But, I have a few questions too. Like, why meet here?"
    "I got impatient. I need you in the field, in front of them, tomorrow, or there's no point."
    "Why not call?"
    Hoffman looked around, shrugged. "If you weren't home tonight, we would have lost the job anyway." It seemed to me there was more to the story. Hoffman may have sold his company, but maybe he liked his independence. That was fine with me.
     
    Hoffman gave me the rest of the night to get myself organized so that I could fly in the morning. The door had barely closed behind him when Maria was already in my closet getting my backpack out, practically jumping up and down.
    “In a hurry to get rid of me?”
    “Oh Mark, you idiot,” she said. Then, when she had my attention, she mouthed the words, rather than saying them out loud. “Walter is alive.” Then she whispered, in Spanish: “And he's in Chiapas.”
    Chapter 2
     
    She was right. The only other possibility was that someone had obtained my key from Walter somehow, and used it to send a multi-layered coded message, including heavy hints about the Zapatistas and Chiapas, where Walter had spent a lot of the past four years. The numbness wouldn't budge yet. I wouldn't let myself believe it until I saw him. Maria continued to pack my things, already completely convinced.
    “Do you want to go downstairs for a while?” I said.
    I grabbed my keys and we went down to the street. Precautions. We walked around the block.
    “Maria, if it's him, I'll find him, but there's something else I need you to do while I'm here.”
    “The case files,” she said.
    “You know?”
    “Mark, you haven't exactly kept it a secret from me. Every time we talk you have new information about Salant, Brewer, Carr, Rossi. I know you're not reading about them in the Times . So, what, you want me to keep a copy safe?”
    I said nothing.
    “You want me to keep up your surveillance?”
    “Just on the... electronic side. Just tell me if you see anything in their accounts.”
    “You're in their --”
    “-- Yep. Not in Salant's though. But I just had an idea about what his email password might be.” I told her my idea, that it might be some variant of his bank account PIN, and that she should slowly try some variations of that out. If she could get into that, there might be communications with people worth following. She knew the principles as well as I did, so she just needed a primer on the new software I was using to keep my tracks covered. Mr. Manley didn't have to file his suit – if one of his sons was alive, we would need to know even more urgently who killed the other one.
    She left at 1am, with my car keys, both of us feeling silly that she wasn't spending the night. My kit prepared and my apartment packed up, I napped until Hoffman came in the early morning to drive me to the airport.
     
    In my economy-class American Airlines window seat, I formed the plan in my head: go straight to Chiapas, work with the local police to solve Hoffman's double murder in a couple of days, then stay on for an extra few days to find Walter. Once I found him, the plan would have to be revised, depending on exactly what he was doing there and why.
    He left me prepared for a short flight with a big stack of briefing papers, so I didn’t have time to enjoy the view. I did look out the window in the moments before landing, though. The last time I’d landed in Mexico City not even Maria beside me could distract me from the view when the plane came from under the clouds and into the smog to reveal, carved into the mountains, a city that was bigger and more chaotic than mine. If Maria couldn’t distract me from that