by Dale Mayer
Taylor crouched beside her. “Are you okay?”
She stared up at him wanly. “No. I haven’t a clue what I’m supposed to do now.”
When the two cops crouched in front of her, she realized just how pathetic she looked.
“Do you need to be checked over?”
She stared at them in confusion.
“Medically,” one guy said. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not hurt, except for my heart. How am I supposed to go back in my apartment when a dead guy’s in my bed? A dead guy I don’t know—may have seen on base—but I don’t know know him, but whose blood covers my bedroom.”
The cop continued to write notes.
“What are you writing?” she cried out. “I have nothing to offer on this.”
“You’re offering lots,” the one said with a smile. “Just keep talking.”
She groaned and slammed her head against the wall, only to cry out and to hold her head because it hurt. Dammit. “How long until I can go back in?”
“I thought you didn’t want to go back in?”
“I need clothes,” she said. “I have to go to work tomorrow. So I need a suitcase and a few things out of there. Then I can leave and go sleep somewhere else.”
“Where exactly would you be going?”
She opened her eyes and stared at them, her mind refusing to function. Finally she shrugged and said, “I haven’t a clue.”
“Well, your apartment is off-limits,” the cops said.
“My clothes?”
“We’ll get somebody to go in with you after forensics has been through the place. But you can’t have anything right now.”
She groaned and sagged farther in on herself. She wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth.
“She’s had enough,” Taylor said, his tone authoritative and firm. “If you need more questions answered, I’ll bring her to you at the station.”
“There will be more questions,” one of the cops said. He stood and handed Taylor a card. “My name is Butler. If you think of anything else, let me know.”
“Video,” she said. “This building has cameras, doesn’t it? Security cameras?”
“It should have,” the cop said. “We’ll get ahold of the feed.”
She nodded eagerly. “That should tell you then that I haven’t been home all day.”
“If you work with a bunch of people, surely they can vouch for that too?”
“Oh, right,” she said. “I do. I can’t even think straight anymore.”
Just then she felt her body being lifted vertically. She stared up at Taylor as he helped support her upright. “That’s not a good idea,” she said. “I’ll collapse again.”
“Not a problem,” he said, wrapping his arm under hers and around her ribs. “I’m taking you to my place.”
Too exhausted and worn out to object, she let him lead her into his place. He walked her to a couch, where she willfully sagged onto the cushion and curled up in the corner. “What a day,” she said, as she closed her eyes and sank into the cushions.
Taylor disappeared for a moment, then came back and gently wrapped a blanket around her.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Thank you. I didn’t realize I was even cold.”
“Your face is sheer white,” he said. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if shock hasn’t taken over to the point that you’re heading into hypothermia.”
She stared at him but could barely comprehend his words. When he took off her shoes, she realized her feet were stone-cold. So were her hands.
He tucked the blanket firmly around her and said, “I’ll put on the teakettle and get you a hot drink.”
She listened with half a mind as he puttered in the kitchen. But the other half was willing to blank out so this could all go away. Closing her eyes, she called out, “Do you mind if I just nap for a bit?”
“Go ahead. Best thing for you.”
But she didn’t hear his words. As soon as she gave herself permission to close her eyes, she could feel that willing darkness—the space where she could forget everything that had just gone on—reaching for her. And she fell into its waiting embrace.
*
Peeking around the corner, Taylor confirmed her breathing was steady. He unplugged the teakettle and poured himself a shot of whiskey instead, then went back and sat down beside her. He got his laptop and sent Mason a message. Then he contacted Nelson and brought him up to speed. Nelson’s response was almost immediate.
Jesus, how long have you been home, an hour and a half?
Nah, I got in about four hours ago now. We’ve already been interviewed, or at least spoken to the police, but she’s crashing hard. I brought her here, and she’s sound asleep on my couch. The coroner is dealing with her apartment.
Does she live alone?
Rather than trying to answer everything on his laptop, Taylor pulled out his phone and gave his buddy a call. “Yes, she lives alone,” he said in a low voice. “And doesn’t have a boyfriend. She barely knows the victim and hasn’t seen him in months.”
“So she’s been targeted for some reason, and it must be connected to the hack job down at the staff records office.”
“But why would anybody care about getting into the staff records data anyway?” Taylor asked quietly. He moved the laptop onto the coffee table, got up and paced the living room with his phone. When he realized he was in danger of waking her up, he opened the double doors leading to his small balcony and stepped outside. “It makes no sense.”
“As we currently know it, yes,” Nelson said. “It may never make sense to us, but it always makes sense to the perpetrator.”
“I know,” Taylor said moodily. “God, all I wanted was to come home and get some sleep for a night or two. Actually get some rest.”
Nelson chuckled. “Hey, as you know, it rarely works out that way.”
“It’d be nice for once,” he said. “As it is, she’s a mess.”
“To be expected,” Nelson said compassionately. “Can you imagine if you’d come home to find a dead woman in your bed?”
“No, I can’t,” Taylor said, thinking about it. “Considering the shock, she’s actually handling it very well.”
“Just give her the support you can, then see if you can find somebody else to take over and get to bed.”
“That’s not happening. They’re working on the body right now. I wish I was in there, listening to everything. You should have seen the guy though. Jesus, he’s naked right on top of her bed. I don’t even remember if he was tied down or not. But he took several bullets.”
“So, rage or staged?” Nelson asked.
“Interesting question,” Taylor replied as he leaned on the railing and stared out at the city, quieting down around him. “You know what? I’ll say, staged.”
“That would go along with everything else we know,” Nelson said.
“The bottom line is, Midge needs me for now, and probably overnight,” Taylor said. “And, of course, I want to get to the bottom of this because it’s right here on my own doorstep, if nothing else. What if it had been my place?”
“Yeah, didn’t I just say that?” Nelson said. “Well, if it’s a hacking job, it could very well be that Tesla is already working on it.”
“I mentioned it to Mason, but she’s probably not likely. You know the navy has a whole IT department. By the time they get into the records database, you can bet some of the tracks will have already be covered.”
“I doubt it, not completely,” Nelson said. “But you also know that Mason will talk to Tesla about this regardless. So he should be getting the brass and the right people on it.”
“And the dead guy and the hack job are connected. I sure would like to know why she was targeted though. Jesus, she’s just a young girl all alone, you know?”
“Are you feeling protective by any chance?”
“Of course I am,” Taylor replied.
“Watch yourself,” Nels
on said, a lazy tone entering his voice. “Slippery slope there.”
“Hey, it’s not the same thing at all as what’s happening to you.”
“I hope for your sake it is,” Nelson said warmly. “Think about it. Wouldn’t it be great if both of us had a partner?”
“I won’t say no if it happens, but she’s hardly what I was expecting.”
At that, Nelson laughed. “Of course not. But, if you think about it, fate has a lot more to do with that than anything. We don’t always get to make these decisions, apparently. I don’t think I’ve seen her around much,” Nelson continued. “I can’t remember the last time I had any reason to go to staff records either.”
“If you ever have,” Taylor said, “she’s pretty unforgettable though. Stands about five foot with a shock of red hair. Ringlets that go everywhere.”
“That sounds like fun,” Nelson said with a chuckle. “She also sounds like a cutie.”
“She is,” Taylor said, “but I’ve never dated her.”
“Why is that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems too close to home.”
“Interesting comment,” he said.
“Whatever,” Taylor said. “Anyway, I’ll get going. Neither of us has eaten, and she’s still asleep. I’ve had a whiskey, but I’ll need food in my stomach before I have another one.”
“Take care of her then. If you can get any more out of the forensic team, that would be good. Otherwise, we’ll just have to wait and see who we can squeeze for details.”
“I’m more concerned about getting details as to why she might have been targeted. What’s the chance this was all some random coincidence?”
“None.” And Nelson was gone.
Taylor put his phone on the coffee table and closed the glass doors again. As he walked quietly through the living room, a soft voice mumbled from beside him.
“Did you say something about food?”
He stepped around the coffee table and sat down on the edge of the couch, pulling the blanket back a little bit so he could see her face. “Are you hungry?”
She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. Then yawned. “I am. I can’t quite sleep. It’s like I’m in a half dozing state, out for a bit, then awake, then down again,” she said. “I don’t want to be a weepy female, but I can’t help thinking about the poor man and what he was doing in my bed. Like, what was he expecting?”
Taylor winced. “Considering he was nude, it’s quite possible he was expecting something risqué.” He straightened up as a thought hit him. “Hey, do you use any of the dating sites, like Tinder?”
She shook her head. “No, I tried it once or twice, but it really wasn’t for me.”
“You have an account though?”
“Yeah, sure.” She frowned. “But then I also have Facebook, Instagram, and all the other much more popular program apps too.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Taylor said, thinking hard, “that somebody used your account to set up a meet.”
Her gaze widened, and he found himself staring into the most interesting golden-flecked eyes he’d ever seen. The fact that they almost matched her hair was bizarre. They were reddish-brown, too, but had little highlights in them.
She sat up slowly and said, “If I could find my phone, maybe that would tell us.”
He looked around and said, “You had it outside in the hallway, didn’t you?”
She shuffled, checked her pockets and then said, “Here it is.” She pulled it out, unlocked the screen and searched through her programs. “Here’s one of them,” she said, as she flicked it up to see her profile and held it out for him. “This is one of the ones I was trying out.”
He frowned. “It’s certainly a very popular one.”
She nodded. “But I haven’t been on that in months.”
He held out his hand. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
She hesitated; it was a personal question, after all.
Whoever she had set herself up as would say a lot about who she was on the inside, plus it would also give a history of her meetings or at least the conversations between her and her matches. As he flipped through them, he said, “How long since you’ve been on here?”
She shrugged. Then yawned. When she could finally speak again, she said, “Months.” She snuggled back into the blankets and said, “Although this is a fascinating avenue to follow, you did say something about food.”
He looked at her. “It says here that you were on the site a few days ago.”
Slowly she sat back up and stared at him. Reaching for the phone, she looked at the match that someone acting as her had agreed to. “Oh, my God,” she cried out. “It’s him, isn’t it? It’s Gary Sims!”
“Yeah,” he said. “And, according to this, you also gave him your address and set up a meeting for today.”
She raised her horrified gaze to Taylor’s and shook her head. “But I didn’t do it. Honest, I didn’t. I don’t even use this anymore! Oh, God, now they’re gonna—”
He grabbed her hands and said, “Calm down, shh. Calm down, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.” But she started shaking again. Then again, if somebody had hacked into his personal life and had used it to set up a meet to murder a man, he might be in a mess himself.
He took the phone from her hand and said, “Look. I might be able to track this down, but somebody has logged into your account, so they either knew your login or had a way to find it. Where do you keep your phone?”
She just stared at him. “With me all the time. Where do you keep yours?”
“A good point,” he said with a nod. “Mine’s usually in my pocket. When I’m working out, it’s in my locker. When I’m on a job, it’s usually with me. When I’m at home, it’s either in my pocket or on the coffee table.” He pointed to it.
She looked to the table, then at her phone and said, “At work, it’s usually in my pocket because I leave my purse in a file drawer unattended. When I’m at home, it’s the same as you. It’s either in my pocket or I just leave it on the counter. Or,” she said, “it’s on my charger.”
“And where’s your charger?”
“Beside my bed,” she said. “That’s where everybody keeps them, isn’t it?”
He pointed to the kitchen counter. “I charge mine here.”
She frowned. “But then, when you get a call in the middle of the night, you have to come all the way out here to answer it.”
“Exactly. The only calls I get in the middle of the night are ones I need to be awake for. By the time I’m here, I’m wide awake and raring to go.”
She winced. “Right. You’re one of those action heroes, aren’t you?”
“Hardly,” he said. “But my world is definitely full of missions. In your case, if it was on the charger by your bed, the only time it’s not with you,” he said, “would be when you are at home.” He thought about her apartment across the hallway and asked, “As you look at my apartment and think of yours, are they mirror images?”
She nodded.
“I wasn’t looking to check that when I was in there, but it just occurred to me.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Well, it means that you would know if anybody got in your apartment, while you were sitting on the couch, watching TV,” he said, “and they couldn’t have slipped into your phone while it was on the charger, unless you were asleep.”
“Okay, that’s just creepy. Why would you even say something like that?”
“Because it needs to be said,” he replied. “Somewhere, somehow, somebody got ahold of your phone and used your Tinder account.”
“But they could have done it from the computer,” she reminded him.
He nodded. “What are the chances that you use the same password for your dating sites as you do for other sites?” As redness rolled up her cheeks, he nodded. “So, all the hacker had to do was find out one of your passwords for one of the sites, and they could get into all kinds of sites, correct?
Do you have a laptop?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m on the computer all day at work, so I didn’t want one at home.”
“Okay, most people have a laptop.”
She shrugged. “I have a tablet.” And then she froze. “I had a tablet,” she said softly.
He leaned forward. “Had? What does that mean?”
“I haven’t found it yet. I just thought it was somewhere in my apartment but—”
“And that’s the tablet you’ve been signing in to all the same accounts with, correct?”
She nodded. “But they still wouldn’t have known what my password was,” she said.
“No,” he said, “but they wouldn’t need to if you use the auto login feature. Which you do, right?”
She closed her eyes and sagged into the couch. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“I want to ream you out for that,” he said, “but unfortunately, you’re not alone, and many people do just like you did. And, in our world of passwords, they try to minimize the problem by using the same password for many different sites.”
“And then he presumably got the one he needed or logged right in because it was set to auto login and sent the message from there.”
“It also means they knew who you were and probably where you worked and when. But it’s interesting timing that this murder happened during the day when you were at work.”
“Not really,” she said, staring at him with wide eyes. “I wasn’t supposed to work today.”
Chapter 3
Midge got up suddenly, as if demons were after her, and honestly, they probably were. She paced around the room. “I got called in,” she said. “Today’s Monday, but I normally work Tuesday through Saturday. The only reason I work Saturday on base is because we have so much paperwork, and they needed somebody to help get caught up, so I volunteered,” she said. “I know it’s unorthodox, but it’s been working for us. But today the regular girl didn’t show. So my boss called me in to take over her shift. Which means, I only got yesterday off, and I wasn’t very happy about it.”
“So, whoever set you up expected you to be home. Which also means they were expecting you to be there to open the door when your date arrived,” he said.
