by Tom Fowler
We walked to their porch, and Gonzalez rang the bell. I stood beside him and Rich was behind us. After a moment, Pauline opened the door. Her eyes went to me, then to the other two. Hope drained from them when she guessed why we were here. Gonzalez and Rich showed their badges. Pauline looked back at me, her eyes welling. I needed to look away.
"Mrs. Rodgers, I'm Sergeant Gonzalez of the Baltimore County homicide unit," Gonzalez said. "This is Detective Ferguson of the Baltimore Police behind me. You know C.T. Ferguson already."
"He's dead," Pauline said. Tears started to roll down her cheeks. "He's dead, isn't he?" I could make an extensive list of things I hate about my job; telling people their loved ones were dead would be right at the top. I tried to do it as little as possible.
"I'm afraid so," Gonzalez said.
Pauline sagged onto the doorframe and cried. She tried to say something, but it only came out as gibberish around her sobs. We let her weep. There's really nothing else to do. I offered her a tissue, which she accepted. After a few minutes, her crying settled to the point she could talk. "What happened?" she said.
"We don't have to do this now," Gonzalez said.
"Just tell me what happened."
"Your husband was found dead in a hotel penthouse in Towson. He suffered a gunshot wound to his head."
"Someone killed him?” Pauline said. “Someone killed my Stanley?" Pauline sobbed anew. Gonzalez started to say something, then stopped when he realized it would be pointless.
"We don't know what happened yet," he said after a couple minutes. "We're considering all possibilities."
"Stanley didn't kill himself!" Pauline sniffed a few times. "There's no way. He wouldn't do that."
"Yes, ma'am,” Gonzalez said.
"Don't you 'yes ma'am' me," Pauline jabbed Gonzalez in the chest with her finger. "You're patronizing me because you think Stanley killed himself."
"I think we're still early in the investigation, ma'am. We follow the evidence."
"Make sure you do."
"Yes, ma'am."
Pauline glared at Gonzalez. "Sorry," he said. "I'll need to talk to you more when it's a better time." He handed her a card. "Call me in a day or two. I hope to have more to tell you then."
She took the card, looked at it, and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. "Thanks," she said. "Will you excuse me now? I have to call my children and tell them their father is dead."
"Of course," said Gonzalez. We turned to leave.
"C.T.," Pauline called as we walked away. I turned around. "Will you stay on the case and . . . and . . . "
"Yes, I will," I said.
When I got home, I went back to work on Stanley Rodgers’ encrypted files. I focused on what I might be able to do instead of how long it would take. I’d hacked good cryptography before, including the suite protecting the largest bank in Hong Kong. It took six fast computers in tandem fifteen days to crack. Today, I owned a faster computer, along with the ability to farm out some work to the cloud. Even if Stanley used better crypto, I knew I could get there in time.
The good thing about being a hacker nowadays is it’s so easy to find and download any tool or code you need. The bad thing—at least from my perspective—is a lot of people can be hackers without the background knowledge once required. I coded my own encryption-breaker in Hong Kong, and I still have it. It’s needed some tweaking over the years, but I trust it more than any similar program I could download.
I built five virtual machines with graphical processing units in the cloud. The GPUs would enable many more attempts per second. Once the VMs were operable, I uploaded and compiled my program on each, then tied the machines together to unify their efforts with my own computer. While my program worked its electronic voodoo, I went out for a run. Four miles later, I came home, showered, and made some spaghetti Bolognese with a nice leafy salad. I kept plenty of pasta for a lunch or dinner later in the week. Buying an expensive car meant I would need to eat leftovers more often.
After dinner, I went upstairs to find my bedroom door open. Here I was without a gun on my hip. As I got closer, I smelled a familiar whiff of expensive perfume. Gloria Reading lay on my bed watching TV with the volume turned down. I gave her a key a while ago when she feared for her safety during one of my cases. It struck me as odd she’d want to stick around under those circumstances, but she did. In the intervening time, I never asked for it back, and she hadn’t offered to return it. Gloria’s chestnut hair spilled around her head and shoulders. She smiled at me in her impossibly pretty way. The small nightgown she wore barely covered past her waist and drew my attention away from her smile.
“I saw you running when I was driving up,” she said.
“I should have seen you when I got out of the shower,” I said.
“I hid. The surprise on your face was worth it.”
“You could have come down and joined me for dinner. There was plenty of it, and it was good. My compliments to the chef.”
Gloria chuckled. “It smelled good, but I already ate. I have a tennis tournament this weekend and can’t eat too much.”
I sat beside Gloria on the bed, leaned down, and kissed her. “At least all those tennis lessons are paying off.”
“It’s only my second tournament,” she said. “Don’t sign me up for the WTA just yet.”
“Can I sign you up for some vigorous exercise in the next few minutes?” I gave Gloria my best rakish smile even though I didn’t need it. We were extremely compatible between the sheets. Outside the confines of a boudoir . . . well, we were still working on it.
She grinned and rolled on her side to face me. “You can even double-book me,” she said.
The next morning, I made breakfast. I always cooked when Gloria stayed over because she was a walking debacle in the kitchen. If I stayed the night at her house, I made breakfast there, though I let her do more because I care a lot less if she ruins her own kitchen. Sometimes, we went out for the morning meal. I tend to favor diners, while Gloria prefers not to be seen with the kind of people who frequent them. This time, I decided to make a casserole with eggs, sausage, mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, and a sprinkling of cheese.
The zucchini sautéed in the pan when Gloria wandered in. I had everything else ready to go. The olive oil and basil crackled in the skillet as I turned the zucchini slices to cook them on the other side. Gloria wandered to my coffee maker—the only kitchen pseudo-appliance I trusted her to use—and whipped up a Kona blend. While her java brewed, I added the zucchini to the casserole and put the whole thing in the oven.
“Smells good,” Gloria said.
“The zucchini cooking or your coffee?” I said.
She thought about it for a moment. Gloria always needed a second or two to think about things before she had her coffee. “Both, actually. Do you use this Kona blend?”
“No,” I said, “I buy it just for you.”
“Really?” said Gloria.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you use it?”
“Not strong enough,” I said.
“Not strong enough?”
“My kitchen is pretty small. I know it’s not big enough to have an echo.”
“It’s plenty strong,” Gloria said.
I shrugged. “I’ve seen the coffee you make at your house.”
“And?”
“And I could read a newspaper through it,” I said.
“No one still reads the newspaper,” Gloria said with a grin.
She bested me there. “Fine. I could read a news app on my phone through it. Either way, the coffee I buy you isn’t as strong as I like. I want coffee rich enough to make a spoon stand at attention in the mug.”
Gloria added enough sugar to energize a small child for an afternoon, then sufficient creamer to make her own ice cream. And she wondered why I didn’t like my coffee the same way she did. “It’s plenty strong for me,” she said.
“To each her own.”
While I waited for the casserole to
finish, I steamed some milk and put some real coffee on to brew. While it percolated, I took the casserole from the oven, got down plates, and set the table. Gloria perked up when I put the casserole on the table. She closed her eyes and took a deep whiff. “Wow, it smells really good,” she said with a smile.
“I aim to please,” I said.
“You hit your mark, and not just in the kitchen.”
If I were the type to blush, her compliment would have done it. I’m not, so I didn’t. I spooned a medium-sized helping of the casserole and plopped it onto Gloria’s plate, then gave myself a larger slice. I was about to take a sip of my latte when the doorbell rang.
Gloria shot me a quizzical look. I shrugged, got up, and walked to the door. Behind me, I heard Gloria pad up the stairs. Her nightgown, if it could be called one, was not appropriate for guests. I looked through the peephole and saw Pauline Rodgers standing on my doorstep. Her eyes looked red and puffy. I unlocked all three locks and opened the door.
“Hi, Pauline,” I said.
“Did you mean it?” she said.
“Uh . . . yes, I meant to say hi to you.”
“No, about staying on the case.”
“I did,” I said.
She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. “Thank you. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the police investigation.”
“Do you want to come in? I just made breakfast.”
Pauline smiled, probably for the first time since she learned her husband had been shot. Or shot himself, which neither of us found very likely. “I’d like that,” she said. “I probably need to eat something.”
I showed her to the kitchen and put a slice of the casserole on a plate while she settled into a chair. “Do you want coffee?” I said.
“I think I need it more than I want it.”
I fetched a mug and poured her a cup from the carafe I recently brewed. When it finished, I set it on the table and took my seat again. Pauline added a perfectly reasonable amount of sugar and enough creamer to make the coffee a medium brown. While she did, Gloria came downstairs, a silk robe covering her from the neck to the knees and slippers on her feet. Pauline looked at her and blinked a few times.
“Pauline, this is Gloria. Gloria, this is my client, Pauline.”
Gloria smiled, which surprised me. Hell, her coming downstairs and associating with a commoner already shocked me. “Hello,” Gloria said.
“Good morning,” Pauline said. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Not at all,” Gloria said. She took a swig of her coffee and then cut a piece of the casserole with her fork and ate it. I watched her for a reaction. She closed her eyes and sighed. “It’s very good.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Yes, this is really good,” Pauline said as she finished chewing. “C.T., where did you learn to cook like this?”
“College. None of my roommates wanted to, so I taught myself. A cookbook here, an online recipe there, plus watching other people.”
She nodded and went back to her breakfast. I couldn’t blame her: it was good. I’d eaten about half of my slice and drank almost half my latte when Pauline broke the silence. “Can we talk about the case?”
“Of course,” I said. “I presumed it’s why you were here.”
“I told the kids.” She put her fork down and took a deep breath. “They’re . . . coping. Right now, they’re both home from school. None of us think Stanley killed himself.”
“I think it’s unlikely, too, but I don’t have any evidence yet.”
“Can you get some?” She obviously didn’t mind discussing her husband’s death in front of Gloria, who focused on her food and let us talk.
“I’m trying to,” I said. “Do you know what your husband was working on?”
Pauline shook her head. “He stopped trying to tell me years ago,” she said. “I can balance a checkbook, but that’s as far as my head for finance goes. What he does is way beyond me.”
I nodded. “It’s beyond me, too, I’m sure. The reason I ask is I managed to . . . acquire some files from your husband’s laptop before the police took it. I—”
“How did you do that?” she said. Gloria also looked up and now stared at me.
If I hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t need to come up with a good lie now. But I ran my mouth, so I did. “They hadn’t brought in any forensic people yet, only a couple of detectives,” I said. “While they poked around the place, I snagged what looked like important files. I was hoping you might be able to give me some insight into them. Or the password to decrypt them.”
“I wish I could.” She paused and took another sip of her coffee. “Is what you did legal?”
“I prefer to think of it as going the extra mile for a client.”
She smiled, and so did Gloria. “I’ll think of it that way, too,” Pauline said.
Pauline left after finishing her slice of casserole and having a second cup of coffee. She didn’t tell me anything useful, but she did cry a couple more times as we kept talking about Stanley. To my continued surprise, Gloria got her a box of tissues and patted her on the arm a few times. I wondered who the pod person at my table was and what the comely stranger did with the Gloria Reading I knew.
“That poor woman,” Gloria said as I cleaned up in the kitchen.
“You seem unusually sympathetic,” I said.
Gloria looked at the tabletop for a few seconds before she answered. “I don’t think I relate to people well. It’s been a problem for years. I’m trying to work on it.”
“I’m impressed,” I said. “What brought this on?”
“A lot of people like me because I have money, or I’m pretty, or I get into good places.” Her eyes welled. “Almost no one likes me for me. They don’t like me for being a good person, and maybe I’m not.” Gloria paused to cry. I put my casserole dish back into the sink, sat beside her at the table, and put my arms around her.
“I don’t think you’re a bad person,” I said.
She looked up at me with tear-rimmed eyes. “You don’t?”
“No. I think you have a sense of entitlement instilled in you by your parents, but I can relate to it. You have a good head, though, and a good heart.”
Gloria smiled and wiped at her eyes. “Thanks, C.T.,” she said. “It means a lot.”
I kissed her forehead. “Anytime,” I said.
“You’re one of the few people who likes me for who I am.”
“It’s only because I’m a softie at heart.”
“You’re a good person, too,” said Gloria. “I watched the way you talked with your client. You had genuine sympathy for her. When we first met, I thought what you did was silly. Now, I think you do good work. It’s important.”
“Wow,” I said. “I have to make breakfast more often.”
Chapter 3
My cracking of Stanley Rodgers’ encrypted files continued. Even with the speed of my computer and the cloud virtual machines, it could take quite a while. I wondered if I would need to solve the case without the benefit of Stanley’s data. What if it didn’t tell me anything useful? Pauline didn’t have his decryption key, but the kind of man who puts good encryption on his laptop is the kind of man who doesn’t tell his wife the key or write it in an obvious location.
Gloria went home to change for her tennis lesson. I was alone with my thoughts on the case. Stanley Rodgers had been murdered. I didn’t care how close the gun was to his hand, and I didn’t give a damn about gunshot residue. He wouldn’t eat a bullet. I felt so before talking to Pauline about it, but our conversation convinced me even more. There had not been a single shred of uncertainty in her voice or manner.
While I waited for the files, I could still try to get to the Rodgers’ financials. I hoped Stanley maintained a separate account, but considering all their money problems, I figured they consolidated as much as possible. Breaking into banks was old hat for me by now. Their defenses were mostly geared to stop denial-of-service attacks or waves
of hackers, not one clever detective worming his way past the firewall. I didn’t know where the Rodgers did their banking, so I punched my way into the most common banks I could think of and nosed around.
The national banks with their larger databases returned results slower. I found several from local financial institutions, however, including a brokerage account for Stanley. He also kept a separate checking service with Rosedale Federal, the only account the Rodgers carried at the regional bank.
The brokerage transactions read like a Shakespearean tragedy. I was ready to cast the role of Falstaff by the end of it. Stanley maintained a very nice account worth a tidy sum for a long time, and then it all went to shit. He hadn’t diversified enough—I wondered how he advised his clients on this front—and got caught holding the wrong stocks at the wrong time. His business lost almost all its value because he invested in a few companies whose use of smoke and mirrors rivaled the best magicians. I figured he would have known better. Why didn’t he learn the lessons of Madoff and Enron?
Reading his investment history depressed me. Stanley made some decent gains in the last few weeks, but he still only put together a modest five-digit gain versus the healthy seven digits he’d enjoyed before. I moved on to the checking. I didn’t see any checks for regular expenses. No cable bill, no electric payment, no gas receipts—why have a checking account if you’re not going to use it for regular checks? This record showed only a couple of large influxes of cash and irregular payments of odd amounts. The payments were made out to “DR.” I doubted the initials notated a doctor, but who the heck was it? Pauline wouldn’t know; Stanley obviously hid this from her.
I had to find out somehow.
I deduced I should talk to the kids, Katherine and Zachary. Calling Pauline to tell her I wanted to go there and visit with them would have been an option, but it would also give them a chance to get their stories straight. If they had them. Ambush people and stories go out the window. I got in the car and drove to their house. When I knocked, a young, pretty girl who looked a lot like Pauline answered. She had long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, a delicate nose, and bright blue eyes reddened from crying. “Can I help you?” she said.
