Sex and Murder.com

by Zubro, Mark Richard

  “That would be difficult. We don’t sign things.”

  “Then how does anyone know who worked on what?”

  “Well, we know that.”

  “If you can know it,” Turner said, “I assume there’s a record of it, and if there’s a record of it, then someone can break into that record.”

  “I could be in danger?”

  “Very much so,” Turner said. Turner saw the sweat on Fortesque’s upper lip.

  Fortesque said, “I need protection.”

  Turner asked him where he was at the time of the murders.

  “Yesterday my wife and I left early to go antique shopping up in Wisconsin. She enjoys that. We spent the night in a bed and breakfast in Lake Geneva. We got back this afternoon, did a little grocery shopping, and went home.”

  His fear was palpable, but they got no further helpful information out of him.

  Their last interview was Justin Franki, the surfer blond, the head of research and development. He said, “Once or twice, I had a niggling suspicion that something was going on. If you look at the companies that went broke and then at our hiring, sometimes it seemed kind of convenient.”

  “Why didn’t you report that to someone?” Fenwick asked.

  “To who? It was my job and my company. I certainly had no proof. I was never certain.”

  Turner said, “The pattern we’ve been able to discover does seem very random. Sometimes they seemed to cause the other company to go broke just as kind of a joke, a lark.”

  “They never did anything without a plan.”

  “Even getting killed?” Turner asked.

  Franki said, “They were smart. They wouldn’t do something stupid.”

  “Maybe somebody caught them at their own game,” Turner said. “Maybe somebody hacked into their computers. Maybe they thought they were geniuses, smarter than everyone else—but maybe they weren’t. Or maybe, somebody got lucky. They were doing something illegal and dangerous. Who in your company would be most likely to know what they were up to?”

  “I think Fortesque must have known,” Franki said. “How can he be head engineer of security development and not know?”

  “Do you have any proof that he was aware of what they were doing?” Turner asked.

  “Well, no.”

  Turner asked, “How did you get along with Mr. Fortesque?”

  “He’s a screamer. That’s how he communicates. He gets all red in the face and goes ballistic. Usually, moments like that preceded flashes of genius on his part, so nobody really minded.”

  “You said you worked next to Eddie Homan.”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  Turner made the announcement. “He’s dead.”

  Franki looked from one cop to the other, licked his lips.

  “Where were you this afternoon?” Turner asked.

  “Working on some computer programs at home. I’ve got logs to prove I was there.”

  “I’d bet computer logs can be faked,” Fenwick said.

  “That’s where I was. All weekend. I had no reason to kill any of these guys.”

  Turner said, “In our first interview, you mentioned constant glitches in the programs you were working on when you had your own company. We don’t have all the data yet, but perhaps we’re going to find that they hacked into your company. Maybe they deliberately ruined you.”

  “They hacked into my company?”

  “We don’t know for sure yet,” Turner said, “but I think it’s a safe assumption.”

  “That would explain it. I haven’t had a bit of trouble since I started here. Only when I was with my own company. I thought it was flaws in my design. It was them. The shits.”

  Turner asked, “At the time you had no sense that anyone was tampering with your product?”

  “No! I had no idea. Now that I know, if they were alive … those shits!”

  His surprise and anger seemed genuine to Turner. He had as much of and as little of an alibi as the others.

  After he left, Fenwick said, “How the hell are we going to get irrefutable evidence?”

  “I have no idea,” Turner said. “Maybe somebody hacked into Lenzati and Werberg’s system. That someone could have altered records. That someone could have hacked into a bunch of other businesses. Maybe a business rival was doing to Werberg and Lenzati what they had done to them.”

  Turner took all the data they’d gathered on Homan over to the corkboards. Fenwick followed him. “Why are you still adding to this thing?” Fenwick asked.

  “I have no doubt that the three computer killings here are connected.”

  Fenwick agreed.

  Turner said, “But we don’t know about these others. We’ve got a lot of knife wounds and a lot of blood. And a lot of piss.”

  26

  The thing I hate most about cops is the way they strut when they walk. It’s an arrogance of the “in” group. It’s power and the presumption of authority at all times. I hate the arrogance. I hate the presumption. When I see them dead at my feet, the hurt goes away for a little while.

  Micetic joined them at the corkboard. “The message on your computer screen that froze everything else out came from the computers at Lenzati and Werberg’s secret lab.”

  “They were dead,” Fenwick said. “How could they be sending anyone messages?”

  “Whoever killed them,” Turner said. “It’s only logical. The questions is, who would want to kill them and me?”

  “I’ve got another possible scenario,” Micetic said. “Once their computers were opened up to the Internet, they were vulnerable. It doesn’t have to be their killer at all. They claimed they were geniuses without peer. Maybe there was somebody brighter than they were. Or at least maybe there was someone bright enough to break into their computers. Or maybe someone simply managed to co-opt their computers like they did when they brought down Yahoo and those other companies last year. Someone used remote computers that they could break into and then send messages routed through them. A killer would know doing that would screw up the investigation. You’ve got several murders. You’d never know how they were connected. If they were or not, you’d have a slew of new data that would, at the very least, confuse you or cause you to ask more questions, endless questions. It would cost you hours of work to sort through the mess, and you’d never know which was connected to which. At the most, of course, you’d never solve the crime.”

  Turner said, “The killer was giving us millions of extra connections.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve got to sort them out,” Turner said. “We need more charts. We need to get the name of every company that ever got security from Lenzati and Werberg. Let’s get a profile of them based on all the data we can find. Then we’ll take all our suspects, including the sexual contacts we’ve managed to unearth. We need to profile everything we know about them. Anything any of them ever had to do with a computer needs to be on there. Then we’ll cross-reference all of that.”

  Several hours later the new charts filled more than half of the corkboard. Fenwick and Turner examined their handiwork.

  “It looks great,” Fenwick said. “I’m just not sure it’s much help.”

  Fifteen minutes later Micetic, who’d been working at Fenwick’s computer, announced, “I’ve got Eddie Homan’s home address.”

  “How’d you get it?” Turner asked.

  “We had his Social Security number. It doesn’t take much once you’ve got that.”

  Eddie Homan lived in a apartment just south of the Stevenson Expressway. The McCormick Place complex dominated the view to the east and north. His one room apartment was a pig sty. Dirty clothes were stacked in one corner next to a purple futon. There was no dresser. Atop the sink, pizza delivery boxes containing half-eaten pizzas, several at the bottom beginning to mold, were piled fourteen deep. The refrigerator was crammed with cartons, most of them partially filled with what was possibly edible several lifetimes ago. Homan did have four unopened bottles of Samuel Adams beer.
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  “These are all of his clothes?” Fenwick asked.

  “I haven’t seen any others,” Turner said.

  “This must be rat heaven,” Fenwick said.

  Turner said, “I don’t think even a self-respecting rat would live here.” The toilet bowl was black with scum. There was no shower. The sink next to the commode was encrusted with rust.

  Turner, Fenwick, and Micetic gathered at the only remotely clean spot in the room, the computer station. It took up a third of the space in the darkest corner farthest from any windows.

  Micetic typed at the computer while Fenwick and Turner inspected the accumulated filth. Fifteen minutes later, under a pile of shredded paper Turner found a Palm Pilot. He handed it to Micetic.

  The computer expert pointed at Homan’s machine and said, “I’ve found records here of their security attacks. I’ll print out copies in a few minutes.” He took the Palm Pilot and connected it to the computer. In seconds the screen began revealing information. “I think this is Lenzati’s,” he said. “It’s got names and addresses of people.” He studied it for several minutes while Turner and Fenwick returned to inspecting the rest of the space. They found nothing that indicated who might have wanted to kill the three victims. They went back to Micetic. He said, “The Palm Pilot has anecdotal records of some of their sexual escapades. It also seems that Lenzati bragged a bit to Eddie Homan.”

  “The two of them were buddies?” Turner asked.

  “From what this says, I think it was more he gave out hints like Werberg did to his sister. Homan was pretty bright. He must have found out about this thing’s existence and gotten hold of it.”

  “Is there any way to print it out?” Turner asked.

  “Sure. I’ll print it with the other stuff. You’re going to have hundreds of pages to go through. I think a lot of it matches what we found at the secret warehouse.”

  In seconds pages from the Palm Pilot began to emerge.

  Turner grabbed the first sheet. “He kept records just like Werberg. I like a victim who keeps records of something that could lead to his killer.” He and Fenwick examined more pages as they emerged. “These are only of the couples they seduced,” Turner said, “what they did, and how he got proof to add them to the conquest list.”

  “Perfect,” Fenwick said.

  “How did Homan get it?” Turner asked.

  Micetic said, “In the original encryption from Werberg, he talked about Lenzati’s proof. This must have been what he was talking about. If Homan had Werberg’s encrypted material, he could have glommed onto this as well.”

  “Maybe he was blackmailing them?” Fenwick said. “I was hoping we’d get blackmail in here somehow.”

  Turner said, “He knew what they had done. He got into their computers. He had the goods on both of them, but then somebody got to them and him. He couldn’t have been killed before the two of them. The killer was after Homan too.”

  Fenwick pointed to the Palm Pilot. “Why? To get this thing? Why didn’t the killer come here and retrieve it?”

  Turner asked, “Maybe he or she didn’t know it existed. Maybe he or she thought all records were somewhere on the computers at the secret warehouse and never found it. We wanted to find it, but we weren’t frantic about it. We had no idea it would contain this much information. How would the killer know it would contain all this? He or she probably wouldn’t.”

  It was nearly eleven when they got back to the station. Fenwick said, “I’m beat. I want to go home. I don’t want you to check your computer anymore. I don’t want any more phone messages.”

  “There’s no chocolate on my desk.”

  Fenwick said, “Not every killer is perfect.”

  Turner walked up to the corkboard. “Let’s at least put this information from Craig Lenzati’s Palm Pilot up here.” They spent fifteen minutes filling in as many blanks as they could. Micetic added the data he’d gotten so far from Homan’s computer on the security fraud Lenzati and Werberg had been perpetuating.

  Micetic and Turner met in front of Rian Davis’s name. Micetic said, “She and her husband had a company that failed.”

  Turner said, “It’s not listed on the printouts from the warehouse.”

  “But it is on Eddie Homan’s,” Micetic said.

  “They didn’t know about this backup file,” Turner guessed. He checked the original sexual encryption they had downloaded. “There’s no couple listed for three months before or after they failed.”

  “When was she hired?” Fenwick asked.

  “Do we have records of that?” Turner asked.

  “I’ll check the Palm Pilot,” Micetic said. He picked it up and began punching letters on the keyboard. Moments later he showed the results to the detectives.

  Turner said, “Rian Davis, the head of the creativity division, had a business that failed and a husband who could have been part of a sex duo. The couple that filed the law suit also fits the bill. The Zengres didn’t have a business. Who among those others was married?”

  Fenwick said, “We haven’t been able to find a lot of the married ones, and remember some didn’t have names.”

  Micetic said, “It’s here in the Palm Pilot. A month after the Davises business failed, Lenzati and Werberg made it with both a husband and wife. Lenzati refers to RPD.”

  Turner said, “Rian Porter Davis. Lenzati and Werberg wrecked their business. The Davises erased the records at the warehouse, but not at Eddie’s. They didn’t know about Eddie’s.”

  Micetic added, “P is referred to as being a ‘steady’ with Werberg.”

  “Steady?” Fenwick asked.

  “Yeah, Lenzati records that Werberg tried to add the number of times he made it with a guy to his proof profile. He refers to arguments they had about it. There were only a few repeats.”

  “Anybody else connected with this that has the initials RPD?” Fenwick asked.

  Micetic searched the Palm Pilot. “Not that I can find.”

  27

  I’m going to kill him. The next chance I get, he’s going to be dead.

  Turner and Fenwick found the home address for Porter and Rian Davis and drove over. It was just past midnight.

  “I’m going to sleep for a week after this is over,” Fenwick said.

  “You and me both,” Turner said.

  They rang the doorbell for several minutes before it was answered. Rian Davis wore a sweater over blue jeans. Her husband, Porter, wore a sweatshirt and warm-up pants with a Stanford University logo on them.

  “It’s late,” Rian said.

  Porter Davis was short and thin—Werberg’s type. He had short-cropped hair with a budding bald spot in the back.

  “We found Eddie Homan’s apartment,” Turner announced.

  “Where was the creep hiding?” Rian asked.

  Turner said, “We found a lot of data on his computer that wasn’t anywhere else.”

  Silence.

  “We found evidence they attempted to ruin your company.”

  “What?” Rian asked.

  “Big time sabotage. We have records that show they interfered with your company before it went broke. Eddie Homan had a record, although it wasn’t in the files at the warehouse. Someone erased it from there. You didn’t know about the files at his apartment, did you?”

  More silence.

  Turner said, “We also have a list of couples they had sex with.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Porter said. “Do you have any proof that we were among those couples?”

  “Did either of you have sex with either of them?”

  “I most certainly did not,” Porter said.

  “The whole concept is revolting,” Rian said. “Are you telling us they ruined our business deliberately?”

  “As far as we can tell, yes,” Turner said. “Lenzati and Werberg caused your company to go bust. They got into your designs and altered them. You never discovered the flaws, so you couldn’t fix them. They kept records of their triumphs.”

 
Porter said, “I knew at the time we weren’t all that bad.”

  “We were all that bad,” Rian said. “They just nudged the inevitable on further and quicker.”

  “Maybe. But maybe we could have made it without their interference.”

  Turner said, “We also found Craig Lenzati’s Palm Pilot.”

  “Oh,” Porter Davis said. They were in the living room. The husband and wife sat on a lemon-yellow divan. Turner and Fenwick were in matching wing chairs.

  Turner continued, “From data found in Lenzati’s Palm Pilot, we believe they had sex with both of you. And Mr. Davis, we believe Mr. Werberg continued to have a sexual relationship with you.”

  “You did what!” Rian Davis said.

  Porter Davis looked stricken. “I had to. He said if I didn’t, they’d fire you.”

  Turner and Fenwick took the Davises down to the station and separated them. Rian was unwilling to speak to the detectives and demanded a lawyer. Porter, however, began to tell all.

  “My wife and I found their scoring system. It took a while, but we broke the code. We erased all reference to ourselves. Or we thought we had. We didn’t know Eddie Homan found or kept records at his home as well. We didn’t know Lenzati kept a record on his Palm Pilot. We knew Brooks had anecdotal records. We found those and erased ourselves from them as well. They thought they were so damn smart about security. After we killed them, we erased everything that related to ourselves—including information about our company. That jerk Eddie still had a record.”

  “Why did you agree to have sex with them?”

  “We were desperate for money.”

  “Why did you decide to kill them?”

  “The sex stuff always rankled. Maybe we could have gotten over that. When we found out what they had done to our company, that was too much. Eddie Homan led us to that bit of information. We met him at a hacker’s convention in Switzerland. We were eager to get revenge. He told us he was double-crossing them.”