Her Last Scream

by J. A. Kerley

  “I’ve read everything he’s ever written academically. There’s no doubt it’s his writing. And there’s something else …”

  “What?”

  “He’s done all sorts of sociological studies and cultural studies. Lately he’s taken an interest in women’s history. Not the full history, but its darker side. Its ugly side.”

  “Is someone threatened by … whatever he wrote?”

  Liza considered the question for a full minute. “Not directly, maybe. It’s just that the thoughts are so filthy and disgusting.”

  “Do you have to work with him?” Alice asked.

  “His office is two doors from mine.” Liza closed her eyes and shook her head. “But now I don’t think I should be in the same building with him.”

  Harry called me from outside Carrington’s office. It took five minutes for him to walk Cruz and me through the discoveries. “No wonder Bromley’s reveling in the idea of tearing apart the system,” I said. “He’s probably been planning it for years.”

  “Maybe killing a few women along the way,” Harry said.

  “You’ve got eyes on Bromley?” I asked.

  “We’re looking for him. His service says he’s taking a working vacation, incommunicado. Apparently this is typical before a major action: he rests up for battle.”

  “The women’s center action,” Cruz said.

  “Bromley can’t know we’re on to him yet,” I said. “He’ll put up a smoke-and-mirrors show like you’ve never seen. We’ve got to uncover his role in this before he knows we’re looking.”

  “Bromley,” Cruz said toward the phone. “How could a walking piece of diarrhea break into a system designed to keep freaks out? Wait … this asshole Krebbs, he know anything about computers? The system is run by –”

  “Computer,” I said, tumbling back in time to another Bromley case. “The computer geek – the hacker Bromley defended a year or so back.”

  Cruz gave me a puzzled look.

  “Some guy was breaking into sophisticated systems and grabbing credit-card info. He was caught red-handed, but Bromley made him into a kind of victim, got him off with a wrist-slap.”

  “More connections,” Cruz said, looking at me. “We’re making connections.”

  “Let me make a couple calls and I’ll be right back.” I had followed the hacker case closely, a buddy of mine in the e-crimes unit being the arresting officer. I called Carl Stella.

  “Bemis,” Carl said. “That’s the hacker’s name. Chet Bemis.”

  “I recall the guy seemed like he was fourteen.”

  “Good ol’ Chet, IQ around 160, emotional age around adolescence.”

  “I need to bust him wide open and fast, Carl. No time for legal niceties – but I don’t need him for anything legal, I hope.”

  “Jesus, Carson. Don’t tell me anything else.”

  “I need a lever to get this guy to spill. Any suggestions?”

  “Unless Chet’s taken maturity pills recently, he’s probably still a horny fourteen-year-old at heart. I figure the guy’d sell his soul – or even his video games – for a night with a woman. He’s got a rigid schedule, finds safety in structure, same regimen every day. Maybe if you –”

  “Tell anything you think would help to Harry and Sally Hargreaves, Carl. Could you call them soon’s I hang up? We’re tight on time.”

  I snapped the phone shut and looked at Cruz. I was terrified for Rein, but the feeling of helplessness was falling away.

  We had forward motion.

  It was four in the afternoon. Hargreaves entered the bar section of the neighborhood restaurant to see her quarry nursing a beer near the end of the bar, eyes watching a soundless CNN. She and Harry had stopped by the MPD’s tech unit, who’d provided recording and transmission hardware. Hargreaves wore a sheer white blouse unbuttoned to show three inches of cleavage and a black skirt ending where the top of her knee commenced. She’d had to tease her hair out at her desk, trying for a trampy take on hip. The purple nail polish had been provided by a twenty-year-old clerk in the Vehicle Theft unit.

  “This seat taken?” she asked Chet Bemis, chunky and bespectacled, wearing a SpongeBob SquarePants tee over knee-length shorts and boat shoes sans socks. His Atlanta Braves ball cap was angled slightly to the side, its brim flat.

  “Uhm no. Huh-unh.”

  Hargreaves tossed her spangly purse on the wood. “Can I get a hand here?”

  Bemis turned to her, confused. “What?”

  “Put out your arm,” she said, using it to hoist herself on to the barstool. “They make these damn stools too high. You got to put your foot on the rung, step on to the sitting part. Fine, if you’re a guy, but try it in heels like these.”

  Hargreaves wiggled a black suede high heel, forcing Bemis’s eyes down a silky length of leg. Bemis seemed pleased with the view, studying for several seconds before reluctantly turning back to Hargreaves’s face.

  “I can see how that’d be tough.”

  Hargreaves squinted at Bemis, leaned back, and studied for another few seconds. Brightened. “I know you.”

  “You do?”

  “I saw you on the news last year. You’re that computer genius, like Bill Jobs.”

  A hint of a smile from Bemis. “It’s Bill Gates. But Steven Jobs. Gates is Microsoft, Jobs is Apple.”

  “Which is your favorite?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They’re competitors, right? Like ball teams. Which do you root for?”

  “I like Apple from a design standpoint, but MSDOS is a lot easier to play with.”

  “Play with?”

  “Adapt to specific needs. There’s a wider range of juicy things you can do.”

  Hargreaves gave Bemis a sly smile. “You mean like using your brains and a computer to go where you’re not supposed to?”

  “Uh, I don’t really do that any more.”

  Hargreaves winked. “C’mon. Just a little?”

  “I’m like, totally not allowed. I’d go straight to prison.”

  Hargreaves sipped her drink, thinking. She checked the deserted bar as if wary of eavesdroppers.

  “Can I tell you a secret, Chet? You won’t tell anyone?”

  “Of course.”

  “I used to room with a friend who’s a cleaning lady. She has keys to people’s houses and knows when they’re on vacation. Once when she was out of town I got into her keys. They’re labeled with addresses and phone numbers and dates when people are out of town …”

  Bemis’s eyes had started to sparkle. “What did you do?”

  Hargreaves leaned closer. “Two of the keys were to homes where the people were gone. Know what I did, Chet?” Hargreaves put her hand over Bemis’s forearm. “I waited until after midnight and went to one of the houses and let myself in.”

  “Cool,” Bemis whispered, sounding on the edge of arousal.

  “I walked into each room and just stood there looking around. It was so –”

  “How could you see?” Bemis interrupted.

  Hargreaves froze for a split second, thinking, whoops. She took a sip of her drink to buy time. “Some lights were on those timer things. So a couple rooms were bright, but most were like a cave, all shadowy and spooky. Those were the coolest rooms. It was so exciting to just stand there that I nearly, uh …”

  “Nearly what?”

  She waved Bemis’s head toward her, leaned over and cupped his ear, whispering, making sure her lips brushed the flesh.

  “Nearly peed my pants.”

  Bemis looked dizzy. “That’s how it is for me when I’m inside a system. Did you, uh, take anything?”

  A sly grin from Hargreaves. “I needed something to remember it by. That’s like what you did, right, Chet? Go inside places and look around, maybe take a little keepsake.”

  “What did you take?” The man’s voice was a dry rasp.

  “You’ll laugh,” Hargreaves said; thinking, What did I take?

  “I won’t. I promise.”

 
; “I took … a memory.”

  “A memory? How?”

  “I pulled off all my clothes and laid in the bed in the master bedroom. The sheets were silk. I rolled all over the bed, pressed myself down into the mattress until I, uh …” Hargreaves winked.

  “Oh yessss,” Bemis whispered. “Incredible.”

  “About once a month I drive by that house and it brings it all back, like a dream, but a big sexy dream.”

  “I know,” Bemis said, a vein pulsing in his neck. “I know.”

  Hargreaves made her breath shallow, a purr. “You still do that sort of thing, Chet?” she said. “Go where you’re not allowed?”

  Bemis swallowed hard. “I’m not supposed to.”

  Hargreaves winked and gave Bemis a sly smile and wiggled her hand, just a shimmy. “But it’s like playing with yourself, isn’t it?”

  Bemis’s mouth fell open.

  “P-pardon me?”

  Hargreaves voice was a warm velvet breeze in Bemis’s ear. “When I was a kid my pastor was always saying how bad it was, you know, diddling yourself. How it meant going to hell and all that. So I didn’t do it any more …” Sal gave it three beats, wiggled the hand again. “Except when I needed to.”

  Chapter 52

  Nautilus sat in the parking lot beside the restaurant, shaking his head under the headset, figuring it was the first time a woman revealed her masturbatory patterns to Chet Bemis. He pressed the cans tight to his ears as the conversation continued.

  “Do you still do it, Chet?” Hargreaves prodded.

  “Usually in the morning and always at night. Sometimes at work I lock myself in the bathroom and –”

  “I mean computers. Do you still go where you’re not supposed to. Just to stand there and look around?”

  A long pause. Nautilus held his breath.

  “Yesterday I was in PayPal’s master computer for hours,” Bemis whispered proudly. “I went through a couple firewalls. It wasn’t like, inside the house, but more like standing inside the entryway. I could go to prison just for that, but, like you said, I had to do it. It was like … you know, with yourself.”

  “Diddling,” Sally said. “Feeling the glow.”

  Bingo! Nautilus thought.

  There was a pregnant silence until Hargreaves returned with a breathy, soulful sigh. “God, you’re so young, Chet. Jeez, what are you, twenty-four, -five?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “You seem so youthful. But manly at the same time. You work out, right?”

  “Uh, sure. A lot.”

  “God, it’s so noisy in here,” Sal said. “I get noise at my job all the time and about now in the day I like just quiet and –”

  “Want to see my shop?” Bemis said. “It’s across the street and real quiet about now, no one there. Sometimes I sleep there when I work late.”

  “You mean you’ve got a bed?”

  “More like a cot, but –”

  “Take me there, Chet,” Hargreaves whispered.

  Nautilus watched Hargreaves and Bemis walk an access drive to the hundred-foot-long strip center, a beige masonry building holding a laundromat, pizza joint, used vacuum-cleaner shop and Bemis’s business, a sign in the window stating CB Computer Services. Nautilus gave them a minute while he cued the hand-held recorder, and then casually crossed the pavement to the door, stepping inside as a bell tinkled above.

  One wall was taken up with shelved devices, a crayon-lettered sign proclaiming Used Comps 4 Sale. Hargreaves and the hacker were behind a counter littered with computer organs: hard drives, memory boards, ventilating fans, loose keys from keyboards. Bemis looked up.

  “I’m sorry, we just closed. We open again at –”

  “I can’t wait that long, Chet. I’ve got a problem needs dealing with right now.”

  The hacker frowned at the use of his name. “Do I know you?”

  Nautilus pulled his ID, flashed the gold. “I’m Detective Harry Nautilus of the Mobile Police Department. Homicide Division.”

  Bemis did confused. “What do you want?”

  “I’m working on a case, Chet. OK to call you Chet? I only need to ask you a single question. Nathaniel Bromley was your lawyer during your trial. He did a very good job for you, spent a lot of hours, brought in expert witnesses, a psychologist. A jury-selection expert …”

  Bemis frowned. “That’s not a question.”

  “Very perceptive, Chet. Here’s my question …” Nautilus looked around at the small shop. “Given that you’re not a visibly wealthy man, how did you pay Mr Bromley’s bill?”

  “W-what does that have to do with –”

  Nautilus held up his hand. “I’m a homicide investigator, Chet. That means there’s a dead body somewhere. That makes my question extremely important.”

  “I-I had some money in investments and, uh –”

  Nautilus smiled. “If you’re going down that road, please consider that my next request will be the paperwork involved in selling the securities. Oh, and I expect I should let you hear something that has a bearing on things …”

  Nautilus pulled the recorder from his pocket, set it on the counter and pressed Play.

  “Yesterday I was in PayPal’s master computer for hours … through a couple firewalls. It wasn’t like, inside the house, but more like standing inside the entryway. I could go to prison just for that, but –”

  Bemis turned to Hargreaves with his mouth open. She winked. Bemis stared between the pair.

  “Y-you can’t u-use that ag-against me, it was –”

  Nautilus sighed. “Are you a lawyer Mr Bemis?”

  “No.”

  Harry’s huge fist slammed the counter. Computer parts jumped in the air. “THEN DON’T YOU EVER DARE PRESUME TO TELL ME WHAT I CAN DO!”

  Bemis turned white. “Well enunciated,” Hargreaves said to Nautilus.

  “Chet seems to have a hearing problem, Detective Hargreaves.”

  Hargreaves leaned the wall and buttoned the top of her blouse “You’ve violated your parole, Chet. I advise you to listen to Detective Nautilus. If there’s anyone with your interests in mind, it’s him.”

  “There’s a clock ticking on a case I’m working on, Chet,” Nautilus said. “Women are dying. What can you tell me about that?”

  “Women dying? Nothing!”

  “See how easy it is?” Nautilus said. “One simple answer and you’ve cleared yourself of complicity in murder. I accept your statement. But we have to find out what you did to pay off Mr Bromley’s legal tab. I expect the bill was excessive.”

  Bemis’s eyes darkened in anger. “My bill was over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Bromley said it would be a lot less. There was no way I could pay it off. I’d lose my shop, everything.”

  “But Bromley said you could work it off, didn’t he?”

  “There was a website Bromley wanted me to hack. A blind one, closed. A system only available to those with several passwords. Bromley had the level-one entry word but needed me to open the rest of the network.”

  “What’s the name of the site?” Hargreaves asked, now taking notes.

  “It’s called Tubman. Layers of security – more than a lot of government systems. Took me two weeks. I expected something big, complex. But all those layers of security are protecting a kind of message board, basically. I think it’s got something to do with drugs moving by courier. Where they’re at.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You can tell where a shipment is in a specific region, but you can’t see where it came from. Each region has its own server, its own code. Think of a checkers board. It’s like you can see one piece and the ways it might move, but you can’t see the whole board, or any history of where pieces have been, or will go in the end.”

  “But a person could, with computer access, jump in front of a piece and hijack it?”

  Bemis nodded. “I never wanted to know anything else.”

  “What door did the password open?”

  “I got in at Boulder
, Colorado. I had to hack other doors from there.”

  Nautilus looked at Hargreaves, mouthed Boulder. He turned to the shaking hacker. “Here’s how it’s going down, Chet. Bromley extorted services from you using your unpaid legal balance as leverage. He didn’t set up an alternate payment plan. He simply said, “Break into this system or you’ll be living under a bridge until some psychopath slits your throat.”

  “That’s about how it really was. He’s a nasty man.”

  “Ain’t that the truth? But in your story there will be no mention of tonight’s little drama. It’s gone from your head, Chet. We requested your help and you were a good citizen every step of the way. Testify to Bromley using you and I can keep your ass out of prison. Bromley can’t, cuz he’s gonna wind up there first. So, who’s your friend in all this nastiness?”

  “You, Detective Nautilus.”

  They left Bemis the way they had wanted: him shaking their hands and thanking them.

  The pair returned to headquarters, Nautilus sitting with feet on the desk, Hargreaves taking Ryder’s abutting desk. Nautilus stared across the wide room, his face as impassive as stone, yet inside his head wheels were spinning like buzz saws, cutting the case down to discrete packets of data. The chunks of data were transferred to a weighing station, where Nautilus balanced each against each.

  “Krebbs’s wife went through the system,” Nautilus said quietly. “Bromley’s wife, too. Both men hate the system for stealing from them.”

  Hargreaves nodded. “You were right, Harry. Our smiling boys share a lot more than golf.”

  “I’ve been thinking about Larry Krebbs’s place in the timeline. I’ve got a call to make.” Nautilus checked his notes, dialed his desk phone, spoke for three minutes. He hung up and looked at Hargreaves.

  “Sam Choy, Krebbs’s boss. He confirms Krebbs is a golfer.”

  “We kinda knew that,” Hargreaves said.

  “Krebbs’s old office had a poster of St Andrews on the wall. He spent lunch hours putting across the floor. He once referred to a female intern as having a six-iron mind in a one-wood world.”

  “Whatever that means. You’re out ahead of me.”

  “There aren’t many places to golf on the Keys – land’s at a premium. Instead, Larry took up …” Nautilus reached into his desk and produced the file of receipts provided by Bromley, shaking them on to his desktop, studying several, “kayaking, fishing, snorkeling, riding a moped and jet-skiing. Krebbs wasn’t vacationing, he was establishing an airtight alibi.”