J.A. Jance's Ali Reynolds Mysteries 3-Book Boxed Set, Volume 1: Web of Evil, Hand of Evil, Cruel Intent (88 page)

Ali sent off an immediate reply.

After punching send, Ali reached over, absently picked up one of Bryan Forester’s thumb drives, and held it in her hand. She had fallen asleep the night before while still wondering what to do about them. Now that B. had cleared the way, Ali felt she could risk looking at them on her own computer. If there happened to be another computer virus lurking in the background of Morgan’s files, Ali could be reasonably sure that she wouldn’t be putting B.’s equipment at risk. And since there was no love lost between Bryan Forester and B. Simpson, it was a relief to Ali that she wouldn’t have to ask for B.’s help in dealing with the Foresters’ situation.

She was about to insert the drive when the doorbell rang.
Company?
she thought.
At six-thirty in the morning?

Except what she found waiting on her front porch wasn’t company at all. It was Leland Brooks, lugging a humongous carpet-cleaning machine. “What are you doing here so early?” she wanted to know.

“Sorry,” he said apologetically, wrestling the machine through the front door. “I thought I mentioned it to you last night. It turns out everyone else is trying to get ready for Thanksgiving
company, too. They told me I could use this today on the condition that I have it back by nine
A.M.
, when it’s booked to go out again.”

Sam took one look at the load of equipment and bolted for the relative safety of the laundry room, where she would no doubt squeeze herself behind the dryer and then need to be coaxed out with offers of food. For right now, however, it was a good place for her.

Chris emerged from his room dressed for school. He paused in the kitchen long enough to fill his coffee cup. “Good morning, Leland,” he said. “I hope you’re not planning on doing any cleaning down in my studio.”

“Let’s see,” the butler said. “Would your studio happen to be the source of all the metal filings and BBs I vacuumed out of the carpet yesterday afternoon?”

Chris’s metal sculptures did leave behind a certain amount of debris. He looked slightly crestfallen. “Yes,” he admitted. “I suppose so.”

“In that case,” Leland replied, “since I expect to do a thorough job of cleaning the carpet, you can also expect that I will clean your studio. There’s not much sense in doing one without the other. You can also rest assured that I’ll put everything back where I found it, which won’t necessarily be where it belongs.”

It was a statement that brooked no disagreement. “Right,” Chris said, backing down. “I’ll get out of your way, then.”

Ali concealed a grin behind her coffee mug. She had already learned that when it came to cleaning, Leland Brooks was not to be denied. Chris was coming to that same conclusion.

“Why don’t I get out of your way, too?” Ali offered. “I’ll get dressed and go have breakfast with my parents.”

As someone accustomed to taking full advantage of other people’s lax computer security measures, Peter Winter was surprisingly blasé about his own. His dealings with Singleatheart were concealed through multiple layers of identity that protected him. For his personal computer, he employed a sophisticated encryption routine, but for the most part, he didn’t worry about it. People like Matt Morrison and his ilk were nothing but chumps, and Peter was willing to bet this Ali Reynolds woman was the same—stupid beyond bearing.

By five
A.M.
on Thursday morning, after a restless night, Peter took his cup of coffee over to the desk and sat down at his computer. The little notes people sent back and forth to their friends and relations often gave away much more than they knew. And that was where he went—straight to Ali Reynolds’s computer and her e-mail records.

The moment he tried to log on to Ali’s e-mail account, however, something strange happened. The egg timer showed up and stayed there. After a moment or two, he tried control/alternate/delete, but nothing happened. The egg timer wouldn’t go away. And that was when he knew he’d been hacked. His computer froze up. He knew that even unplugging the damn thing would accomplish nothing. As soon as the power was restored, the inevitable destruction would continue. For the next three minutes, unable to stop the slow but inexorable process, he sat and watched helplessly to the end, until the words
FATAL ERROR
flashed across his screen.

Full of impotent fury, Peter watched his computer’s death throes and worried that his whole house of cards was about to tumble down around him. It wasn’t just his computer. He could
replace that. Though it would take time, eventually, he’d be able to reconstruct the passwords and most of the files. But he couldn’t do it right then. What left him feeling half sick was that someone—a woman, no less—had been smart enough and had gotten close enough to him to do this kind of damage. And she’d had balls enough to hit him where he lived. Yes, Peter hacked in to other people’s systems all the time, most recently, that hopeless asshole Matt Morrison’s. But to Peter’s knowledge, this was the first time anyone had ever hacked him. Turnabout definitely wasn’t fair play.

Who the hell is this bitch?
he wondered.
How dare she do this, and what makes her think she can get away with it?

Slamming away from his desk, Peter headed for the shower. Trying to harness his outrage, he stood under the stream of hot water and considered the problem. Nothing Peter had read about Ali Reynolds had indicated that she was any kind of computer genius. In order to take on the unassailable Peter Winter, he knew she must have had help of some kind—talented and very capable help. That detective friend of hers, maybe? What Peter found most disturbing was that the woman had made no effort to conceal her identity, although clearly, the attack had come from her. What did that mean? Was she letting him know she knew everything? And what if she and her helper had somehow managed to gain access to his files or break his encryption code? That would spell utter disaster.

By the time Peter stepped out of the shower, he had settled on a course of action—he’d have to go to Sedona and find her and her helper, too. Fortunately, even without access to his computer, Peter had a good idea where to start looking. He had scanned through a surprising amount of Internet-based Ali Reynolds material the day before and had read about her resto
ration project on Manzanita Hills Road, which also happened to be where he had located Bryan Forester’s truck. If the house was under construction, she probably wasn’t living there at the moment, but with any kind of luck, Peter thought he’d be able to decoy her into coming there—alone.

And once he found her? It was pretty clear to him that he’d have to put her out of her misery. After that, it would be time for Peter Winter to exit stage left. He’d had that game plan set up and waiting for a long time, along with several suitable alternate identities. The problem was, he hadn’t intended to make use of any of them yet.

Moving deliberately, he dragged two suitcases out of the hallway closet. He packed one with nothing but computer gear—the still-working laptops as well as the dead one. In the other bag he packed clothing, and not much of that, either. Depending on where he ended up, he’d buy whatever he needed. Right now it was important to travel light. He opened his briefcase and made sure he was fully equipped with gloves, scrubs, and duct tape. The last items he placed in the briefcase were the several vials of Versed that he kept at home and at the ready. Experience had taught him that unconscious victims were far less troublesome than those who were able to fight back.

Just before leaving the house, he emptied the safe. The DVD and his collection of false documents went into the briefcase. The key ring went into his pocket. With Alison Reynolds rocking the boat, carrying a cache of phony IDs and precious mementos could prove dangerous, but leaving them behind was even more so. He might find himself in a position where he’d need access to one or more of them. As for the DVD and his collection of rings? He’d carry those with him until he once again had a secure hiding place.

By eight o’clock, Peter was driving north on I-17, heading toward Sedona. When he called the hospital to let them know he wouldn’t be coming in to work that evening, he was already north of Black Canyon City. Careful to keep the right measure of hesitation and concern in his voice, he explained to Louise Granger, the administrator on duty, that he’d just received a distressing phone call from his mother’s physician in upstate New York. “My mom’s in the ICU in Buffalo,” he said. “She may not make it through the day. I’m on my way to the airport right now.”

Louise was nothing if not sympathetic. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Dr. Winter,” she said. “Is there anything we can do?”

“Cover my shifts in the meantime,” Peter said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, but there’s no way to tell how long I’ll be gone.”

“Of course, Dr. Winter,” Louise said. “Don’t give it another thought.”

Thanks, Mom,
Peter said to himself as he put down the phone. He hadn’t spoken to his mother in over fifteen years, not since she had caught on to the fact that he’d been using forged checks to take money from her account. That tardy discovery had come years after he’d forged her name to countless excuses and permission slips all through junior high and high school. When the subject of families came up, he usually told people that his mother bounced back and forth between her condo in Florida and her home in upstate New York. That wasn’t true, of course. She’d been dead for a long time.

He’d seen to it.

By the time Ali emerged from the bedroom, Leland had the noisy carpet cleaner up and running. Ali grabbed her computer, the power cord, and the two thumb drives and headed for the
Sugarloaf Café. It was cold and spitting snow as she started down Andante Drive. When she reached the Sugarloaf parking lot, her nose was assailed by the unmistakable aroma of freshly baked sweet rolls.

Edie met her at the door. “You’re up bright and early,” she said.

In answer, Ali held up her computer. “I’m looking for office space,” she said. “Leland Brooks is cleaning carpets.”

Edie generally disapproved of people who used her tables for anything other than eating, but the restaurant wasn’t crowded, and she cheerfully led Ali to a booth in the back.

“I know the drill,” Ali said. “I’ll close down and move along if it gets too crowded. In the meantime, I’ll settle for coffee.”

Once the computer booted up, Ali extracted the two thumb drives from her jacket pocket. The two drives looked exactly alike, and neither of them was labeled. The first one she inserted into her computer turned out to be Bryan’s. Ali had no difficulty searching through his various files and folders. The internal passwords that had been installed in his programs worked as though the files were being opened by Bryan on his own computer.

As far as Ali could see, everything was work-related and as dry as dust. There were immense files that held nothing but computerized architectural drawings. The saved e-mail file consisted mostly of back-and-forth correspondence between Bryan and his various suppliers or customers. Some of the e-mails concerned projects that were still at the planning or construction stage, along with others that had been completed.

Ali remembered Morgan’s video complaint about her husband—that the man worked too hard and wasn’t any fun. From what Ali could see, he appeared to be guilty as charged. If he had any interests or pursuits outside work, they weren’t apparent in his computer files.

“Okay if I sit down?” Dave Holman asked. “Your mother thought you might not mind sharing.”

Having lost track of time, Ali looked around and was surprised to find that the restaurant had filled up while she was perusing Bryan’s files. Dave Holman, coffee cup in hand, was standing next to her booth.

“Of course,” she said, closing the computer and setting the Mac down on the banquette next to her. “Have a seat.”

Dave slid into the booth opposite her. “I stopped by your place earlier, looking for you,” he said. “Mr. Brooks told me I could probably find you here.”

“You stopped by before seven
A.M.
?” Ali demanded.

“Before eight,” Dave corrected. “But I need to talk to you, Ali.” His serious expression worried her.

“What about?” Ali asked.

“I know that when it comes to the Forester situation, the two of us are on opposite sides of the fence,” he said. “I hope you’ll consider this more of a courtesy call than anything else.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look,” he said with a sigh. “Morgan Forester is dead, and it’s my job to find out what happened to her, even if I end up having to step on your toes.”

“My toes?” Ali asked. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s been brought to my attention that Bryan Forester maintains a storage facility of some kind at your place up on Manzanita Hills Road.”

Ali nodded. “He has one of those Mini-Mobile things. He keeps supplies and equipment in it. Why? What does that have to do with me?”

“Now that we know about it, we’ll have to search it,” Dave said. “And probably the rest of the construction site, too.”

“Wait a minute. You’re planning on searching my house? Why? What are you looking for?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” Dave said. “To anyone. This is an active investigation.”

Before Ali had a chance to say anything more, Edie Larson bustled up to their booth with her order pad in hand. “Ali appears to be drinking coffee and using her computer. Are you here to order, or are you just talking?” Edie asked.

“A little of both,” Dave told her. “We’ll have breakfast, and when it’s time for a bill, give it to me. I’m buying.”

A
fter Edie Larson had finished taking their order and left, Dave picked up the conversation. “I wanted to see you before I left town,” he said. “I’m on my way to Phoenix in a couple of minutes. With your help, we’ve located a possible witness down there.”

“My help?” Ali asked.

Dave nodded. “The driver of that vehicle whose license you had Bryan call in to me the other day.”

“The car Lacy saw?” Ali asked.

“That’s the one,” Dave said. “A rental from Hertz. The guy who rented it was from Phoenix. I have an appointment to interview him later on this morning. It could turn out he saw nothing at all, but he played so coy with me on the phone, and that got my attention.”

“If he was evasive on the phone, are you thinking he might be involved?” Ali asked.

Dave shook his head. “Forget it,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t have mentioned him. Right now he’s nothing but a potential witness. But after my meeting with him, I’ll be stopping by Prescott
on the way home. That’s when I’ll pick up a warrant to search your place on Manzanita Hills Road. We’ll be executing it later this afternoon.”

“Why are you telling me about this in advance?” Ali asked. “Isn’t that a little unusual?”

“It’s a lot worse than unusual,” Dave admitted. “The sheriff would have my badge if he ever found out about it, but the two of us go back a long way, Ali. I’m letting you know in advance so you can be on-site when we do it. There’ll be a lot less chance of damage if someone—you or Mr. Brooks, perhaps—is there to unlock doors with actual keys.”

“As in unlock the doors to my house,” Ali said.

“It may be your house, but it’s also a construction site,” Dave explained. “A construction site where our homicide suspect may have concealed evidence of his crime.”

“But it’s still my house,” Ali insisted.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Dave’s regret sounded genuine, but Ali didn’t much notice. “Aren’t you afraid I might go there before you do and try to get rid of anything incriminating?”

Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. Dave looked at Ali sadly and shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m not. To begin with, you wouldn’t know what to look for. Besides, that’s not who you are. You’d never conceal evidence.”

Stealing a look at the computer beside her, Ali wasn’t so sure about that. She was about to tell him about the two thumb drives when Edie arrived at the booth with their breakfasts—ham and eggs for Dave and French toast for Ali for the second day in a row.

“So will we be seeing you and your girls at Ali’s for Thanksgiving?” Edie asked.

Dave looked at Ali. “As far as I know, we haven’t been invited. Besides, the girls will be in Vegas with their mom for Thanksgiving. I get all three kids for Christmas.”

Knowing she had stepped in it, Edie beat a hasty retreat, leaving Ali to sort out her mother’s unintentional gaffe. “Sorry, Dave,” she said. “We’ve both been so busy, and I was waiting to figure out where the dinner would be. But now that we know the new house won’t be ready, it’ll be at the old one. And you’re definitely invited. Are you coming?”

Dave looked at her and grinned. “Depends on who’s doing the cooking,” he said.

Ali’s lack of cooking credentials was well known, but having people continually pointing it out was also a bit tiresome. “That’s not fair,” she said. “Accurate but not fair. And Leland will most likely be overseeing the food, so no one should die of food poisoning. Will you come, then?”

“I doubt I’ll get a better offer,” he said. “Count me in.”

Lighthearted banter had fixed the momentary awkwardness left behind by the warrant discussion. They started into their food. Dave had managed only a bite of his ham and eggs, and Ali was about to tell him about the thumb drives, when his phone rang.

He put down his fork and answered. “Holman here.” Then he listened for a long time while someone else spoke. “What do you mean both hard drives are ruined?” he demanded at last. “How is that possible? You’re telling me somebody deliberately crashed the computers before we could execute our warrant?” There was another short pause before Dave went on. “But crashed or not, surely we can find someone smart enough to retrieve the data.”

As Dave listened again, Ali tried to make sense of what she had overheard. She was sure that the damaged computers in
question, picked up as a result of a search warrant, were the ones that belonged to Bryan and Morgan Forester.

“You’re right,” Dave was saying. “I can see how writing over the files is worse than just erasing them. Cute. Well, we’ll see how funny Mr. Forester thinks this is once I finish up with him. Do you remember that computer-science professor up at Northern Arizona University, the guy we asked for help on that other case a couple of months ago? Yes, that’s it. Professor Rayburn. Check with him and see if he has any ideas on how we can go about recapturing the data. With any luck, Bryan Forester isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is. There’s always a chance he missed something.”

Shaking his head in disgust, Dave slammed his phone closed and jammed it into his pocket. “What do you know about that!” he muttered. “It seems someone has written over all the files on the Foresters’ computers. And whoever did it thought he was being incredibly cute—he wrote the same letters over and over: H-A, as in ha, ha, ha. That’s funny, all right. Funny as hell. You probably think your friend Bryan is downright hilarious.”

“Bryan wouldn’t do that,” Ali said quietly. She realized as soon as she’d said it that it was absolutely true. Why would Bryan go to so much trouble when he knew there were perfectly usable and readable backup copies available, copies that were, even now, within arm’s reach of Dave Holman? Someone else might have done that, but not Bryan.

“You might believe it, but I don’t,” Dave returned abruptly. “Trust me, there was something incriminating in those files, and I intend to find out what it was.”

“I have them,” Ali said. “I can show them to you.”

Dave stared at her, thunderstruck. “You what?”

“I have Bryan’s files, and I’ve looked at them,” she added.
“The ones from his computer, anyway. Believe me, Dave, they’re all business-related.”

“And how is it that you happen to have them?” Dave asked.

“Because Bryan gave them to me. For safekeeping.”

“Sure he did,” Dave said. “Once he took out whatever it was he didn’t want you or anybody else to see. What the hell do you see in the guy, Ali? Don’t you see what he’s up to? He’s playing you for a fool.”

For the first time, Ali wondered if Dave Holman was jealous. “I can give you copies,” she offered.

“Right,” Dave said. “Sure you can. Copies of copies with everything he wanted deleted already deleted. Don’t bother! It’ll be a waste of your time and mine.” Shaking his head, he once more yanked his phone out of his pocket and punched in a series of numbers. While he waited for his call to be answered, Ali concentrated on her French toast. She had offered the drives to Dave, and he had turned her down. Now, though, she was thinking about her computer, where Bryan’s contaminated thumb drive was parked in her USB port. If a delayed-reaction worm of some kind had corrupted the files on Bryan’s and Morgan’s computers, would hers be next?

“Yes,” Dave was saying into the phone. “This is Dave Holman of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office. I’m calling for Mr. Morrison. Mr. Matthew Morrison.” That statement was followed by a long pause and a deep frown. “What do you mean, he won’t be in today? Is he sick or what? I have an appointment with him scheduled for this morning, and I was calling to see if I could move it to a little later.”

There was another pause. “Look,” Dave said curtly. “I already said who this is. I’m
Detective
Dave Holman with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. And it’s urgent that I speak to Mr.
Morrison today. No, I don’t need to speak to his supervisor, I need to speak to him. All right, then. I’ll wait.”

While he sat on hold, Dave managed another few bites of breakfast. Then, covering the phone mouthpiece with his hand, he spoke to Ali. “Guess what? It seems that Mr. Morrison, our reluctant witness, has unexpectedly taken the day off work. I wonder if the prospect of having to see me has anything to do with his going AWOL.”

Dave turned his attention back to the phone as someone came on the line. “Yes, Mrs. Helwig. I’m not sure why they brought you into this, but yes, that’s correct. I’m a homicide detective with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. Mr. Morrison is a potential witness in a case I’m investigating…”

The person on the other end of the line did some talking, and Dave’s face took on a distinctly reddish hue.

“Mrs. Helwig, please slow down. Are you telling me Mr. Morrison is dead?” Even across the table, Ali could hear snippets of a woman’s voice—an almost hysterical woman—talking at warp speed.

“When?” Dave asked at last. “And how did it happen?” Finally, he added, “Can you tell me who’s doing the investigating?”

Holding his phone between his chin and his shoulder, Dave dragged a tattered notebook out of his shirt pocket and began scribbling in it. “Yes, I have it,” he said. “Detective O’Brien with the Scottsdale Police Department. And what’s that address again?”

Seconds later, when Dave closed both his phone and his notebook, he looked at Ali and shook his head. “So much for my potential witness,” he said. “Matthew Morrison is dead. Sometime overnight he drove his vehicle into his garage, closed the door, and left the motor running. His wife found his body this morning. Just
before I called the office looking for him, she had phoned to let them know that he wouldn’t be coming in ever again.”

As he spoke, Dave was already dialing the next number. “Someone else will have to go to Prescott to pick up that search warrant,” he said into his phone. “I’m on my way to Phoenix. Scottsdale, actually. It seems our possible witness or suspect in the Morgan Forester homicide offed himself overnight. Well, so far it seems like suicide, anyway. Right. It’s probably a good thing for Bryan Forester that we’ve still got him under lock and key. Otherwise he might be declared a suspect in a second homicide.”

There was another long pause. “No!” he exclaimed. “You can’t be serious. They’re actually thinking about cutting him loose? Who came up with that lamebrained idea? All right, then, if they do let Forester out, I want someone on his tail every step of the way. I want to know where he goes and who he talks to. I also want you to amend that warrant request to include his telephone records. If there’s any kind of connection between him and the guy who’s dead down in Phoenix, I want to know about it. He may have been able to do a clean sweep of his computer, but his phone records won’t be as easy to destroy.”

Dave hung up and took one last slug of coffee. Between phone calls, he had eaten very little. Leaving most of his food, he slapped a twenty-dollar bill down on the table. “Tell your mom to keep the change,” he said. “I’ve gotta go.” With that, he dashed out the door.

Edie came back over to the table after he left. “Sorry about the Thanksgiving thing. I really stepped in it. Is that why Dave went racing out of here like that, or was there something wrong with the food?”

“The food was fine,” Ali said. “And there’s no problem about
Thanksgiving. Dave’s on his way to Phoenix. Something happened to one of his potential witnesses.”

“I wonder if they’ve had any luck in finding Morgan’s ring,” Edie said.

“What ring?” Ali asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Morgan’s wedding ring,” Edie answered. “And the three-carat diamond engagement ring that was with it. I heard they’re both missing.”

“They weren’t found on the body?”

Edie shook her head. “Nope. One of the cops was asking Cindy Martin about them last night. Cindy always did Morgan’s nails, and the cops wanted to know if Morgan was wearing her rings the last time she came into the salon—which she was, by the way. Cindy said she never went anywhere without them.”

“So people are thinking that the killer stole her rings?”

Edie shrugged. “Cindy says she’s heard that Bryan is really hard up for cash right now.”

“So now she’s suggesting that Bryan made off with his wife’s rings in hopes of what—pawning them and realizing some quick cash?”

“It’s just a theory,” Edie said. “People are entitled to their opinions.”

“And I’m entitled to mine!” Ali returned. “What else are people saying?”

“There’s evidently some talk about possible drug use. I guess there was a puncture wound of some kind found on the body. The cops asked Cindy if Morgan Forester ever used drugs of any kind. Cindy said that if that had been the case, she for sure would have known about it.”

Did she know about Singleatheart?
Ali wondered.
If she had,
she would have spilled her guts about that, too. Remind me never to set foot in Cindy Martin’s salon.

“Look, Mom,” she said. “I don’t think we should be discussing any of this.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, these sound like confidential details of a homicide investigation.”

“But Cindy—”

“Cindy talks too much,” Ali declared.

As Edie went to deliver coffee to another table, Ali was left thinking about the series of ha-has that had been written over every one of Bryan Forester’s computer files. If Bryan wasn’t responsible for destroying his own computer files, who was? Someone who had no idea Bryan had backups. Ali was equally sure Dave was right about one thing—the culprit, whoever it was, had something to hide. And that was when it came to her for the very first time that there might be some connection between the guy who had infiltrated Ali’s computer and Morgan Forester’s killer.

Maybe what Ali and B. had been dealing with was something far more deadly than a simple identity thief. Lost in thought, Ali removed Bryan’s thumb drive from her computer. She needed to warn B. about that, and much as she had wanted to avoid doing so, she also knew that she would have to ask him for help with the possibly contaminated thumb drives.

Ali glanced at the clock on the far wall. She had spoken to B. on the phone under three hours earlier, and he’d been on his way to bed, but the urgency of the situation meant she needed to talk to him sooner than later. When she called, though, his line went straight to voice mail, so she left a message. When her
cell phone rang a few minutes later, she more than half expected to hear B.’s voice on the line. She didn’t.