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

by Jance, J. A.

  It would have helped if Peter had known what had brought Ali Reynolds to Singleatheart in the first place. Had she logged on for the same reasons most other people did—because she was lonely and looking for a date? Sedona was a small town. Peter assumed it was possible that Morgan and Ali were good enough friends that Morgan, as a satisfied Singleatheart customer, had referred this Reynolds woman to the website so she could join in the fun and games. Or was that wishful thinking on Peter’s part?

  Several things gave him cause for concern: Ali’s alleged tendency to be a crimefighter; her license to carry; and most of all, her long-term relationship with Morgan Forester’s widower. Since she was one of Bryan Forester’s customers, the far more likely scenario was that she had learned about Morgan’s involvement with Singleatheart through him. If Bryan was under suspicion for his wife’s murder—as Peter most certainly hoped he was—it made sense that Ali had visited Singleatheart while snooping around on his behalf.

  It was well after midnight before Peter drifted off to sleep. He did so only after deciding that he would take another serious look at Ali Reynolds first thing in the morning. By logging on to her computer and seeing what she was up to, he’d be able to ascertain whether or not she posed a threat to him. If she didn’t, fine. If she did? That was another matter. In that case, Peter would find a way to take care of the problem—forever.

  Once Belinda Helwig became Arizona’s auditor general, she was determined that she and everyone on her staff would lead by example. Worried that too many state-funded employee hours were being squandered on personal Internet activity, Ms. Helwig had instituted and enforced a comprehensive workplace ban on personal e-mails.

  Matt Morrison was someone who always strove to be an exemplary employee. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have dreamed of violating that particular rule, but these were desperate times for him. As such, they called for desperate measures.

  In their phone conversation earlier, Detective Holman had mentioned the dead woman’s name. Unfortunately, Matt had been in such a state of shock that he hadn’t been paying close enough attention. It seemed to him now that the name started with an M, but he couldn’t remember exactly. Whatever the name was, he hadn’t recognized it.

  Once he was off the phone, Matt had sat numbly in his cubicle, staring at the shoulder-high walls and mulling his plight. The detective may have called the dead woman by another name, but she had to be Susan Callison.

  As the hours passed, Matt called into question everything he knew or thought he knew about Suzie Q. She had claimed to be separated from her husband and had said she lived in Glendale. Now Matt wondered if any of that had been true. According to Detective Holman, the dead woman had been married and living near Sedona. Where did that leave Matt? Out on the end of a limb, while Detective Holman, armed with a chain saw, was ready to lop it off.

  From the time Matt’s mother had first put a red Crayola in his hand, he had done his best to color inside the lines. Fearing disgrace, he had always played it safe and had never taken chances. Not until Monday. But now disgrace was coming anyway. Matt knew he wasn’t guilty of murdering anybody. Surely, with the help of someone, somewhere, he’d be able to prove that, no matter what phony evidence the cop had manufactured about him. But in order to prove his innocence, Matt knew he would end up losing everything else. Jenny would know he had been unfaithful—at least he had tried to be. Their friends at church would know all about it, and so would everyone at work.

  That was particularly galling. Work had always been Matt Morrison’s safe haven. No matter how tough things were at home, he’d always been able to escape by going to work. Once word about this got out, though, he knew what would happen. Everyone in the office would recognize Matthew Morrison for the loser he was. They’d laugh about him behind his back and whisper about him before and after he left the break room. It would be like the checkout line at Lowe’s—only worse.

  So Matt set out on a course of action that he hoped would spare him some of that humiliation. It might spare Jenny some ugliness as well. He did it the way Matt Morrison did everything—in a thorough and organized fashion.

  First he brought up his folder of Suzie Q correspondence. One at a time, he went through all the e-mails that had come and gone between them, reading each message as he went. The ones that hurt the most weren’t the ones at the beginning, when they’d been testing the waters, or the plaintive ones he’d written to her this week after she hadn’t written back. No, the ones that made his heart ache were the ones in the middle of their not-quite-affair, the sweet-nothing silly notes from when they had both believed—well, both had claimed to believe—in a future that had included the tantalizing promise that somehow, someday, the two of them would be together, living a happily-ever-after existence.

  Matt read through the messages and remembered how he had felt when he read those miraculous words the first time—remembered how they had buoyed him and given him hope. Now, once the words had been committed to memory, he deleted each and every one of them. When the messages were gone, Matt went to his buddy list and deleted Suzie Q’s name. He didn’t doubt that cops, armed with a search warrant, would be able to obtain the deleted messages from the server, but he was hoping they wouldn’t bother.

  With a sigh, Matt turned off his computer. He put away the files he’d been working on earlier. He straightened his desk. He returned the stapler he’d borrowed from Bobbie Bacon. Once his cubicle was in order, Matt was ready to head home. He knew it was time, but he also knew there was no hurry.

  On his way out of the building, he stopped off in the men’s room. There, standing behind the closed door of a stall, he removed the condoms and the packet of little blue pills from their hiding place in the back of his wallet. He was dismayed that it took a series of several flushes before the plastic-wrapped containers disappeared down the toilet.

  He spoke pleasantly to the security guard at the desk in the downstairs lobby. Out in the parking lot, Matt retrieved his ’96 Corolla from the employee lot and then meandered east toward home. Traveling on surface streets rather than hitting the freeways, he stopped at a 7-Eleven on Indian School long enough to fill the gas tank and buy two pint bottles of Baileys.

  He opened one of the bottles while he was still parked at the gas pumps. Swallowed straight, the stuff was so cloyingly sweet that he almost gagged, but he managed to keep it down. He hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch, so the booze hit him hard. Not wanting to be picked up on a DUI, he waited until he was at Scottsdale Road and North Chaparral before he took his next big swig. It was important that there be enough booze in his system to blur the lines between deliberate and accidental. The trick was being able to show an intent to get drunk without an intent to do anything else.

  When Matt pulled up in front of his house, he was relieved to see that all the interior lights had been turned off. Jenny wasn’t the kind of person who would leave a porch light burning on those rare occasions when he came home later than she did. The darkness inside meant she was fast asleep. Considering her snoring problem, he doubted that his opening and closing the garage door would disturb her in the slightest.

  He drove into the painstakingly neat two-car garage and parked the faded blue Corolla next to Jenny’s much shinier ’05 Acura. Once the garage door had closed behind him, he put the car in park and engaged the emergency brake. Leaving the engine running, he reached for the bottle again and took several more quick swallows, one after the other. As the stuff slid down his throat, he started to feel the buzz. That was good. So was having a full tank of gas.

  Leaning against the headrest, Matt wondered how long it would take. It would be better for all concerned if it was over long before Jenny woke up. She usually staggered out of bed around seven or so and came scrounging out to the kitchen in search of her first cup of coffee. Matt knew there would be far less fuss and bother if there was no chance of reviving him when she opened the door and found him. Things were going to be bad enough for her that
Thursday morning. He didn’t want to make the situation any worse.

  The first bottle of Baileys was entirely empty, and the second was mostly so by the time he started feeling more drowsy than drunk. It took several tries before he was able to twist the cap back on the bottle, but he managed it.

  Good, he thought dreamily. No sense in spilling what’s left and making a mess.

  Ali’s phone rang at five to six, dragging both her and the cat out of a sound sleep. Samantha left the foot of the bed in a huff while Ali groped for her phone.

  “We have a bingo,” B. announced triumphantly. He sounded wide awake and amazingly chipper.

  Ali was not. “A what?” she grumbled.

  “A bingo,” he repeated. “Our bad guy tried logging on to your e-mail account a little while ago. I’m pretty sure we nailed him.”

  “And you collected all his files in the process?”

  “I think so,” B. said. “And if he had to sit there and watch his computer die, he’s probably not a happy camper at the moment.”

  Ali made the effort to sound a little less grumpy. “That’s great,” she said. “So does that mean I can use my own computer again?”

  “Probably,” B. said. “If I were him, I’d have learned from my mistake. I doubt very much that he’ll be trying to invade your computer files again anytime soon. He won’t want to risk damaging a second computer.”

  “So we’re done, then?” Ali asked.

  “Not by a long shot,” B. said. He sounded focused and energized. “I’m a little surprised it was that easy. I would have thought he’d do more about securing his own equipment. He does have a fairly sophisticated encryption code. I’m working on breaking that in hopes of getting a look at his files.”

  “What are you hoping to find?” Ali asked.

  “We managed to stop him before he could do any real damage to you, but there may be others who weren’t as lucky—people who maybe don’t yet know they’ve been victimized. If we can find them and let them know what’s going on, we may be able to bring law enforcement in on this after all.”

  Now that the crisis with her own computer had been averted, Ali found that idea appealing. “In other words, now that we’ve had our immediate gratification, we’ll let someone else take a crack at him.”

  “Exactly,” B. agreed. “In the meantime, I’m hoping that having access to his files will give us some clues about who this guy is and where he lives.”

  “Any ideas on that?” Ali asked.

  “My first guess would be that he’s one of the employees on the Singleatheart server farm in South Dakota—some low-level minimum-wage guy who figured out how to circumvent the system. I’ll start by doing some unofficial background checks on a few of those folks and see if anything jumps out at me.”

  “How?” Ali asked. “Will you ask the cops for help?”

  B. chuckled. “Are you kidding? There are background checks, and then there are underground background checks. For what I do, the second one is far more useful, and those will have to wait until later. Right now I have all my computer power working on breaking that encryption code. And since my computers can churn out logarithms without any help from me, I’m on my way to bed.”

  Having just abandoned her own, Ali was a little surprised. “You’re going to bed at six o’clock in the morning?”

  “What I do crosses international datelines, so local time zones tend to fade into the background,” he replied. “I sleep when I’m tired, eat when I’m hungry, and don’t punch a time clock.”

  “Luckily for me,” Ali said. “And thank you for this good news, but are you sure it’s safe to use my computer?”

  “Relatively safe,” B. told her with a laugh. “From that one source, at least. It doesn’t mean someone else won’t try to pull the same stunt, but you can rest assured that if there’s another problem, it’ll show up on my system as well.”

  “Good night, then,” Ali said. “Or should I say good morning? Sleep well.”

  Fully awake, she scrambled out of bed and reached for her robe. Out in the kitchen, the coffee grinder howled into action as Chris started brewing fresh coffee. She followed the heady aroma into the kitchen, where she found her son looking questioningly at the two computers and the two thumb drives that still littered the dining room table.

  “What happened with all the computer drama?” Chris asked.

  “Thanks to B. Simpson, good has prevailed,” Ali replied. “When whoever it was tried to access my e-mail account early this morning, our worm knocked him out and collected all his files in the process.”

  “Way to go,” Chris said admiringly.

  While Ali waited for the coffeepot to finish, she sat down at the table. Her old computer, left on as bait, clicked with a new mail announcement. Reassured that whoever had been spying on her had been taken offline, Ali was relieved to see a familiar name in the address line—Velma T, her longtime correspondent from Laguna Niguel.

  Dear Babe,

  I’ve had the most wonderful surprise, but now I’m in a bind and don’t know what to do about it. You maybe remember that earlier this year, when I went on that long trip, I met up with a wonderful lady from Oak Harbor, Washington, Maddy Watkins. She just sent me an e-mail that she wants to come down to see me over Thanksgiving. I think she’s really trying to get away from her kids, but that’s another story.

  The problem is, I had just told you that I’d come to your place for Thanksgiving, and now I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been to Sedona, and after you brought it up, I had my heart set on coming to see you. Should I e-mail Maddy and tell her not to come or what?

  Velma T in Laguna.

  Ali sent off an immediate reply.

  The more the merrier. Invite her to come here. Will she be coming from Seattle, or will she be coming with you? Please let me know so I can make suitable travel and room arrangements for you.

  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 clea
ning 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.