Page 72 of The 9th Man

He decided to let that topic go. For now. “I saw the game cameras on the trail coming in. With audio. That’s high tech. Did he have any other surveillance equipment?”

“Lots. He never explained why and I never asked. There are motion sensors and cameras all over. You couldn’t get within a hundred feet of this place without him knowing about it. But that was most likely the law enforcement and paranoia in him. Ray always thought people were out to get him.”

And maybe with good reason, considering what happened to Benji. From Talley they knew that Ray Simmons and Benji were connected, which Sue just confirmed. How? Hard to say. Plus Stephanie had discovered a new player. So he had to ask, “Did your grandfather ever mention the name Thomas Rowland?”

Sue shook her head.

“Or Kronos?” Jillian added.

“Not a word.” She paused. “Ray liked to keep a lot to himself. Suppose that was the FBI in him. But there were some odd emails.”

“Are they still on his computer?” Jillian asked.

“I have no idea. But I do know the password.”

Sue walked over to a laptop resting atop a small desk. She tapped the keyboard and pointed at the screen. “They’re still here.”

He and Jillian joined her and they scanned the emails.

All of them were encoded with a series of random numbers. No words anywhere. Just numbers.

“Look at the addresses,” Jillian said.

There were emails to Oceanus [email protected] an address noted [email protected]. And many back. But none to or [email protected], which had brought all the trouble onto Jillian.

“Notice the change in tags and numbers for each e-mail,” he said.

Sunandriverwere flipped out in the first position and the numbers altered between 18 and 19, depending on the sender.

Not a thing though to or fromharvest.

“The addresses are similar to the Kronos one,” he said. “That’s not a coincidence. My guess. Ray Simmons wassun. Benjamin Steinriver.”

He focused on the last one, sent by Simmons to Benji over a month ago. “Look at the date,” he said to Sue. “How is that date in relationship to your grandfather’s death?”

“The day before.”

He studied the screen.

2456-1253-0989-9737-1130-5492-5942-7073-2187-9713-5329-8437-0539-3402-3537-7024-8007-4418-5418-4223-4164-0539-8299-2343-3665-7728-4576-2832-2390-8322-8748-9708-1508

He worked his phone and learned that, “In Greek mythology Kronos was identified with the harvest, Hyperion with the sun, and Oceanus a river.”

“Code names?” Jillian said.

“Clearly. But there’s nothing here about Kronos. No emails in or out.”

“I agree,” Jillian said. “That’s odd.”

His mind was working. “We need to find out if these coded emails are to and from Benji. I think I know how we can make sense of these numbers.”

And he saw she knew exactly what he meant.

31

BEFORE HE MADE THE NEXT MOVE, LUKE TRIED TO FIND OUT WHAT HEcould about Ray Simmons. It might be helpful to understand the personality involved. Especially one who’d taken his own life. So he asked Sue questions.

Ray had been born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father, a police officer, was shot twice in the line of duty, so he discouraged his son from signing up for the force. Ray worshiped his dad so he listened and chose another path. Four years of pre-law at college, then on to the University of Chicago Law School, where he befriended another student, his future wife, Maureen. He proposed at their graduation after-party, embedding the ring in a copy ofCommentaries on the Laws of Englandby Sir William Blackstone.

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