Page 122 of Evil Bones
I followed Mr. Sunshine down another polished corridor to a room containing an array of computers, lighting rigs, backdrop screens, and microscopes. Positioning two chairs in front of a terminal, my reluctant guide gestured for me to sit.
I sat.
After logging on, Koster inserted the thumb drive into the appropriate port. When the familiar home screen appeared, he double-clicked the key icon.
As expected, nothing happened.
“Okay, smart guy,” Koster mumbled under his breath. “Let’s have at it.”
Koster worked the keyboard with lightning-fast fingers.
More nothing.
“Not bad, buddy boy.” As before, Koster spoke to himself. “But not good enough.”
I watched without comment.
Forty minutes and a million keystrokes later, the screen changed color and a rotating box appeared.
“Fucking A!” Koster hooted, air-pumping one arm.
I would have joined in the victory theatrics were I not frozen in shock, eyes glued to the monitor.
A video had launched, showing a setting as recognizable as my own face. The Annex with its ancient pine in the side yard, my Mazda parked on the driveway below.
A wavery transition morphed to a different but equally familiar tableau. One far more disturbing in its intimacy. In the intrusion it implied.
Footage of my bedroom filled the screen, recorded through the open door leading in from the hall. The lights were off, the walls and furnishings cast in an eerie blue-gray.
Koster must have picked up on my altered body language.
“You know the place?” he asked without turning.
“It’s my home,” I said, masking the white-hot anger sparking below my sternum.
“Yeah?” Whipping to face me.
I nodded, too shaken to reply.
“You cool to who shot this?” he asked, thumb-jabbing the screen.
“I’ve no idea.”
“That’s some heavy shit.”
I said nothing.
“Want to view it again?”
“Yes.”
We did.
And again.
The third time through, with the playing speed slowed, we bothspotted a previously overlooked detail. A flick of purple-and-black entering the edge of the frame as the camera made its sweep of the room.
“Did you see that?” Koster asked.
