by T. L. Haddix
“No can do. I’m to guard that one…” He pointed at Maria. “…as though she were Beth.”
Stacy snickered. “Then you’d better start flirting.”
With mock anger, he wadded up a piece of paper and threw it at her.
“Really, is that the best you have?” Stacy teased. “I thought you were some big-shot baseball player in high school.”
“Well, I guess I could call Gordon and ask him for advice.”
Hoping to stop them before the battle became bloody, Maria interrupted. “This is interesting.” When they both snapped to attention, the playful teasing disappearing as if it had never existed.
“What’s interesting?” Ethan asked, leaning forward.
“Just the file structure they have here. What did Kathryn tell you, Stacy?”
Stacy tossed the paper wad at her. “I thought you had something big. That was mean. Kathryn explained how her company had been set up, and how she would go about hacking into another company’s system, if it were her.”
“I’ll bet that was an interesting conversation,” Ethan said. “How would she do it?”
Stacy pulled her notebook out of her jacket and thumbed to the page she wanted. “Since I’m not a geek, I had to take notes. Apparently, Kathryn is a geek, in addition to all her other attributes. Anyhow, she said… if it’s a VPN, whatever that is, she’d need to be able to log into the system somehow, unless she could hack it.”
Maria nodded, sitting back to listen. “Go on.”
“She explained that there are three main points of access to the records—the transcriptionist, the doctor’s office, and the transcription service itself. The service is the administrator, with the doctor’s office secondary, and the transcriptionist third. In most services, a transcriptionist might have multiple accounts, and an account might have multiple transcriptionists, depending on how big the account is.”
“That seems to be consistent with what I’m seeing. What else?” Maria asked.
“I feel like I’m taking a test here,” Stacy grumbled. “Let’s see… file structure. The data files are probably organized by account name. Inside those folders, usually by date, but sometimes by file number, are the patient records. Every office is different, Kathryn said, with some offices requiring rigid adherence to file structure, and others not so much.”
Ethan stood to stretch and started to pace. “Okay, great. So how do we find out how this guy got in?”
“The first thing we should do is develop some flow charts,” Maria said. “See if anyone who works here overlaps on all our victims’ doctors. We know that the owner and her assistant will.”
“What kind of numbers are we looking at here?” he asked.
“Prime has eighteen transcriptionists and twenty-nine accounts. They’ve only lost one contractor in the past few months, and she moved to California. Unless she has a partner here, I doubt she’s our suspect,” Stacy said.
Pulling Gloria in, they went over the list of transcriptionists, noting which ones worked on which accounts and what shifts. After that was done, they let her go back to work while Maria put the data into a flow chart. Once the results were in, they were back to square one.
“Damn. Not a single match,” Ethan said, frustration coloring his tone. “Now what?”
Maria stood to do her own stretching. Her back was starting to hurt from sitting too long. The odd, residual pain was the most annoying side effect from her surgery, aside from the doctor’s moratorium on sex.
Ethan stepped up to touch her arm. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I just need to move around some. Now, the next step is to make sure that the transcriptionists are only logged onto the accounts they’re assigned to. That’s going to take a while, and I can do it at home after I copy some files over.”
“You’re really hurting,” Stacy accused her gently. “Why didn’t you say something?”
Maria tried to downplay the pain. “I may have overestimated my endurance. I’m okay, though, I promise. I have a little more steam today, and I’m going to take some ibuprofen right now.”
Ethan watched as she dug through her purse for the pills. “How do you think this guy’s getting in?”
She didn’t answer right away as she swallowed the tablets with some water. “I’m pretty sure it isn’t wirelessly. They do have a couple of wireless networks here, but those networks’ interactions are pretty limited with the server. That leaves hacking and VPN. Hopefully, these logs will tell us something.”
Things wrapped up pretty quickly after that, with Maria completing the file transfer she needed. As they left the office, they stopped to talk to Gloria.
“Is Ms. Simms here?” Stacy asked.
“No, she had an appointment with our largest client. She said to let her know if you need anything else.”
Something occurred to Maria. “Have you had anything odd happen lately, technologically speaking?”
The assistant considered the question. “No. Well, there has been some trouble in the last few months with different transcriptionists getting logged off the system or having trouble accessing it. But it’s so random, and they can usually get back in within a few minutes.”
Maria felt a buzz zing through her. “How long has that been happening, exactly?”
Moving to her computer, Gloria tapped on her keyboard. “We log everything. Let me check.” After a couple of minutes, she said, “It looks like it started about four months ago.”
“Is there any chance you can print that log out for us?” Ethan asked. “How far back does it go?”
“As long as Prime has been open. When I said we record everything, I meant everything. How far back do you want me to go?”
“From January on?” He looked at Maria, who nodded.
“Sure thing.” Gloria hit a final button and Maria heard the printer come to life. “I have a partial list of everyone who has had access to the computers. I won’t have the full list until Ms. Simms returns.” She handed Ethan both documents. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Not right now, but that may change.” Stacy handed the woman her card. “If anything comes to mind that stands out, please call me.”
By the time they reached the car, Maria was kicking herself for overdoing it. From the looks she was getting, she knew her distress was showing.
“Doctor or home?” Stacy asked.
Tired and in pain, she slumped against the backseat. “Home, please. I’m okay. I just need to lie down.”
“Just drop me by the office and you can go with her,” Ethan told Stacy. “I’ll let Wyatt know.”
“I’m sorry, guys. I didn’t think it would turn out like this. I didn’t realize just how much the surgery took out of me.”
Ethan gave her a concerned smile. “We’ll be fine. You just go home and rest. All the other stuff will take care of itself.”
After dropping Ethan off at the courthouse, Stacy took Maria straight home. “I’ll stay until Wyatt gets here,” she said as they went inside.
“What makes you think he’ll come here?”
Stacy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have to be a detective to figure that one out. Go lay down, and holler if you need me.”
Too tired to argue, Maria headed to her bedroom. She shed her clothes and tugged on a gown, then curled up on the soft bed with a sigh of pure relief. She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
~ * * * ~
When Maria woke up, she heard the soft murmur of the radio coming from the kitchen. Glancing at the clock, she was surprised to see that she’d slept for five hours. Not bothering with a robe, she headed for the kitchen, following the scent of garlic and something else that perfumed the condo.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Neva greeted her. “Feeling better?”
“Um, yeah. I thought… how did you get roped into babysitting?” She moved to the cabinet, took down a glass, and filled it with water.
“Well, now, Wyatt was here, but he got called away. He did
n’t want you to wake up alone.” With efficient movements, she shooed Maria to a chair then opened the oven door. Satisfied with what she saw, she used the oven mitts to pull out a bubbling casserole, placing it on the stovetop.
Maria realized she was starving, and her stomach growled as she watched Neva get plates down from the cabinet. “What’s that?”
“One of Wyatt’s concoctions. You have any bread in this place?”
“Garlic bread in the freezer. You don’t have to do that,” she told the older woman as she got the bread.
Neva just smiled. “My mother always said that a meal wasn’t complete without bread, and I’m inclined to agree.” At Maria’s direction, she found a baking sheet and placed the bread on it, then in the oven. Turning back to the table, she said, “You know he’s in love with you, right?”
Maria froze, the glass halfway to her mouth. “I… no. What?”
Neva’s laugh was gentle. “Trust me, sweetie. I’ve known the man since he was a rookie pup. Shoot… even before that. I’ve never seen him so besotted.”
For a moment, Maria struggled with what she wanted to know, but then she decided to go ahead and ask. “Not even with Julie?”
Pouring herself another cup of coffee from a thermos she must have brought with her, Neva shook her head. “Nope. Not even when they were first married. I used to babysit those girls when they were young, so I knew the family well. Wyatt and Julie dated some in high school, and then he went into the Army. When he got out and came home, he hired on at the sheriff’s department, and they picked back up.”
“High school sweethearts.” Maria tried to act as though the idea didn’t bother her, but she had a feeling Neva wasn’t fooled.
“Well, I guess so. I’ve always wondered if they didn’t get together because so many people expected it. He was the handsome football star; she was the homecoming queen. Any marriage that starts out because it’s expected instead of what the couple really wants? That’s a foundation built on sand, and it’s only a matter of time before it starts to erode.” She pulled the bread out of the oven and served the meal, taking a seat across from Maria.
They ate for a few minutes without speaking. It took Maria a few minutes to get her head around what Neva had told her, and then curiosity reared its head. “So what was the call about?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you.” Neva paused, considering. “But I’ve often done things I’m not supposed to. The woman who owns the transcription service? Her assistant found her dead about an hour ago.”
Chapter Forty
The scene at Leslie Simms’s house was one of the cleanest Wyatt had ever worked, and he whistled as he looked around the open living room.
“You could eat off these floors.” He watched as the coroner and his assistant zipped Leslie Simms’s body into a body bag. “I didn’t expect this. Did she give any indication of being suicidal this morning?”
“No,” Ethan mused. “Not at all.” He walked to the center of the living room, standing under the beam where the body had hung. A straight-backed chair lay nearby, tipped over onto its side. Hands on his hips, Ethan turned in a slow circle.
“What’s bothering you?”
He scratched his jaw. “It’s too easy. Evidence followed, bad guy cornered, so she takes care of herself for us. End of story.” He shook his head. “I’m not buying it, sorry.”
“There’s a note,” Wyatt said.
One of Ethan’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s typed.”
“She was a transcriptionist.” He smiled at Ethan’s consternation. “Convince me.”
Accepting the challenge, Ethan walked over to the desk in the converted dining room. With a gloved hand, he picked up the stack of blackmail letters. “These, first of all. They’re drafts—edited with red ink, I might add—of the notes sent to victims. Not only is it too convenient finding them here, but they’re just lying here, loose. Nothing else is, not even the suicide note.” He placed the letters back on the desk and returned to the living room, stopping near where the chair had fallen. He pointed to a nearby bookshelf. “Then there’s this. See how these books on the top row are all jumbled up?”
“Yes, and all the other shelves are neat and organized by height. So?”
Ethan held up a hand. “I touched some of her books today at her office. Touched, Wyatt, ran my fingers over the spines. She damned near took my head off. The woman was an obsessive neat freak, to the point where she probably suffered from OCD. This shelf, with these books messed up like this? This would give her a panic attack.”
Wyatt rubbed his face, looking at all the things Ethan had pointed out. “We can’t build a case on what you’ve shown me.”
The detective practically growled with frustration. “I know. Maybe trace will show us something. Can we get the assistant in here to take a look around?”
“Afraid not,” Stacy answered as she walked into the room, the coroner behind her. “She had to be sedated.” Stopping beside Wyatt, she eyed Ethan. “You don’t think she killed herself, do you?”
“No. It’s too neat, and way too convenient.”
She agreed. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Harvey, did you see anything odd?” Wyatt asked the coroner, who stood beside him.
“Not yet, but I’ll pay special attention when I do the autopsy tomorrow morning.”
With little else to do inside the house, they headed outside. Harvey headed to his van. The weather had turned nasty, with a cold, slow drizzle bringing an early evening to the day.
“I hope I’m wrong,” Ethan said. “I hope she did commit suicide, because if she did, we can probably keep all this hidden. If this was murder, though, those letters are all going into evidence.”
Wyatt laid a hand on his shoulder, knowing the detective was probably thinking about how the revelation of the letters would affect the victims. “Ethan, we’ll handle the fallout if that happens.”
After a minute, Ethan nodded. “Okay, Boss.”
Chapter Forty One
A little after ten o’clock, Wyatt pulled into his garage. He was completely exhausted. Instead of going back to the office or to Maria’s, he’d helped with the canvass of the neighborhood.
When he’d stopped for a few minutes to text Maria and get some coffee, Stacy had shaken her head at him. “You’re avoiding her.”
“I’m not ready to talk to her yet. And no offense, but I’m not talking to you or Ethan about Maria, either.”
He’d continued working until the last house had been visited. Once that was accomplished, he’d driven home, cold and damp, and so tired he hurt.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Ethan had been called to the scene of a domestic dispute that had resulted in one of the parties being shot. Though the woman had been airlifted out, she was expected to survive. That was the third such incident in the last week, and the most serious. When Ethan had checked in with him just before Wyatt left town, the detective had sounded as tired as Wyatt felt.
“It’s connected to that damned forum, but it’s worse; he’s escalating. This time, he posted the inflammatory material, as well as mailing it to the parties involved. Just in case they missed it on the internet,” Ethan said.
“We’re being run ragged by this character,” Wyatt had growled. “He’s toying with us, Ethan. I feel it. I’m very much afraid he’s leading up to something big.”
As he dragged his weary carcass into the bathroom and stood under the shower trying to get warm, he felt his age. Wyatt worked hard at keeping himself as fit as the officers under his command, but on nights like the one he’d just had, the years seemed to add up all at once. He stayed in the shower a long time, letting the water rinse away some of his anger and frustration. Thanks to the tankless water heater he’d added a couple years ago, he didn’t run out of hot water, but after a while, Mix started scratching at the shower door with a concerned whine.
Wyatt got out and dried off, pulling on a T-shirt and a pair of sweat pants. “We’l
l curl up in just a little while, buddy,” he told the dog as he scratched behind the shepherd’s ears.
As he passed through the bedroom on the way downstairs, the phone on the nightstand taunted him. He’d sent Maria another text earlier, telling her he wouldn’t be stopping by that evening.
“Are you still mad?” she texted back. He hadn’t really known how to answer that. Finally, he settled on the truth.
“A little. Been a rough night. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Her response came a long minute later. “Okay. You need space. Understand. Good night. Stay safe.”
He’d texted back a response for her to do the same, and that was that.
Feeding Mix and Match in the kitchen, he was struck by how quiet the house was. It felt empty in a way it hadn’t since Julie died. They hadn’t been happy there, not really, but he didn’t think he’d realized how unhappy until the past weekend. Having Maria there, even though she’d been somewhat subdued because of her surgery, had filled the house with a warmth that had brought the place back to life.
“I’m being stupid,” he told the animals as they ate. “I know that. This is why I didn’t want to get involved with her. I knew I’d get stupid and screw things up.”
Pouring a glass of milk for himself, he stared out the window into the darkness beyond. “Not going over there tonight was probably a mistake, but I’m just too raw right now. I’ll open my stupid mouth and say something I shouldn’t, then she’ll never want to marry me. God, I can’t believe I just said that.” The words had surprised him, but more than that, he was stunned to realize he meant them.
He waited until the animals finished their meals, then let Mix out for his nightly run. The dog didn’t stay out long, the cold rain ushering him back inside with haste. Weariness in every line of his body, Wyatt led his pets back upstairs. With a regretful look at his phone, he turned off the light and crawled under the covers.
