Stone Eater (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 2)

by D. F. Bailey

  He tucked his bag under his arm and made his way to the door.

  “And one more thing.” He turned to face her. “If you do see me again, whatever you say, make it convincing because now I’m the one who has to believe you.”

  ※ — EIGHT — ※

  “TO THOSE OF you who took Memorial Day off, I hope you enjoyed it.” Wally Gimbel smiled as if he might be setting a snare. “And for those of you who worked” — he jabbed a thumb at his chest — “I’m buying a round of beer at The Cavalier. Six o’clock.”

  A round of cheers and jeers collided in the air. Free beer or not, the staff would likely pour into the neighborhood brasserie by five-thirty. A free round from Wally (a rarity) meant almost everyone would stagger out the doors an hour later and three or four drinks heavier.

  “In any case, just because it’s Tuesday, doesn’t mean you escaped Monday Morning Rounds.” He smiled at the news staff huddled around the massive table in the boardroom. “Okay people, time to focus.”

  Monday Morning Rounds, was a group meeting that Wally used to review the stories his reporters had in the hopper at the beginning of each week. He insisted that each news item focus attention on the people in the story. And he implored his reporters to nurture their sources to reveal information which they would never divulge to anyone else.

  “People, people, people,” he’d chanted — sometimes shouted — when an errant reporter led a story with a list of statistics instead of the criminal background of the fraudster who’d just sold a new perpetual motion machine to the state government.

  “You want them to confess to you. Like a damned priest,” he added. Usually his rants ended at that, then the cheshire-cat grin crossed his lips as he dwelled on the notion of swindlers and crooks confessing their sins to the flock of vultures otherwise known as journalists.

  Suddenly Wally’s mood deflated. Finch winked at Fiona as Wally pointed the tip of his pen from one reporter to the next, extracting story updates from each as he went along. To some he would advise them to dig deeper, find collaborating quotes, or weave a new thread into the article. With others, he’d simply instruct them to drop it and move on. “Stop whipping a dead snake,” he’d say. “It has no legs. Never did.”

  With the briefing complete, Wally discharged them with a coach’s bravado and a prompt to “get outta here and kick butt.” He clapped his hands for emphasis and then pointed to Will and Fiona. “Except you two. You stay.”

  After the door closed Finch laughed and turned his attention to Wally. “Sometimes I don’t know if you’re pretending to be chief surgeon of San Francisco General Hospital or head coach of the Giants.”

  “Both. And that’s your mixed metaphor, not mine.” Wally waved a hand dismissively. He didn’t accept insubordination from anyone unless it was curried with humor. Or delivered in private.

  “Okay. Gianna Whitelaw.” He raised his eyebrows and turned from Fiona to Will. “I see we got the interview with her friend. But somehow you picked this up” — his pen leveled at Finch — “instead of Fiona.”

  “At Eve Noon’s insistence,” Fiona said.

  Finch studied her a moment. Over the weekend she’d highlighted her hair with streaks of green and blue.

  “It’s all the same to me,” he said. “We met when she handled media for the SFPD, so no ice-breakers required.”

  “Whatever.” Wally shrugged. “Nice tribute from Noon, but we can’t add another inch to this story without new facts.” He lifted a letter in his hand. “Senator Whitelaw has written this letter to the Parson brothers instructing us to cease and desist from any further publication about his daughter’s suicide. In my mind, it’s a request we ought to respect.”

  Finch examined his hands, wondering what to reveal about the thumb drive, cell phone and diary. Hiding the facts from a managing editor bore substantial risks. From past experience he knew it was best to tell all, otherwise his credibility would be destroyed if he had to enlighten his boss sometime later. But some facts had to be set aside. His intimacies with Gianna and Eve, for example. That could never come out.

  “There might be more to it, Wally,” he said once he’d sorted through the options.

  Wally peered over the top of his glasses. “Like what?”

  “Like she couldn’t have jumped from the bridge.” Fiona leaned forward, her voice rising with anticipation.

  “What?” Wally cocked his head as if he’d heard lightning strike.

  “The two nights before her body was discovered, a contractor, J.W. Edwards and Sons, had closed both sidewalks to complete some maintenance they’d fallen behind on. Jake Edwards told me that the sidewalks were blocked off at both ends on Monday and Tuesday from eight P.M. to six A.M. Neither he nor his sons saw any pedestrians enter or leave the bridge either night.”

  “But all the TV stations reported.…” Wally hesitated and then continued. “Are you saying the media speculated that she jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge?”

  “Maybe they jumped to the conclusion.” Without a hint of irony, Fiona pushed a strand of blue hair from her eyes. “They could have assumed she leapt based on her final Facebook posting. But Edwards claims that was impossible.”

  “We know there’s no CCTV on the bridge, but what about webcams? There must be some overlooking the bridge. Can’t we zoom in and see pedestrians on the sidewalks?”

  “You’d think so. But the closest view comes from Crissy Field. I played with the online lens for twenty minutes. You can barely see the eighteen-wheelers as they cross.”

  Wally’s lips turned up in a sneer. He shook his head in dismay.

  “And her computer’s gone missing,” Finch added. He was speculating of course, but knowing that Eve had lost the battle for the computer, he felt sure it would never be recovered. “No one can verify that Gianna actually wrote that note. Or that somebody didn’t do it for her.”

  “Missing?” Wally eased his wide back against the upholstery of the chair. He set his eyes on the ceiling and then turned to Finch. “Okay. I know you’re holding something back. So what else?”

  Finch decided to plunge forward. “I’ve read her diary. Her mother loaned it to me on Friday. There’s not a hint that she was suicidal. Grieving over Toeplitz, yes. But there’s not a word suggesting that she’d take her own life. We’re also doing a forensics analysis of her cell phone. And I have a thumb drive that was in her possession. But I haven’t been able to crack the password yet.”

  “Whoa, whoa. So now you have Gianna’s diary, cellphone and a thumb drive? When did this happen?”

  Finch rolled his eyes. “It’s been a long weekend, Wally. Literally.”

  “And who’s we?” Wally tipped his head backward as if he expected a blow.

  “Eve Noon. After I interviewed her, I learned there’s more to this case than we think. A lot more.”

  “Eve Noon?” A skeptical look crossed Wally’s face. “Be careful, Will. She’s got a vested interest in this case; Gianna was her best friend. In a situation like this, we can’t base any reporting on partiality and bias.”

  “Besides, isn’t she required to return Gianna’s property to the family?” Fiona asked.

  “Not technically.” A thin smile crossed Finch’s lips. “In Gianna’s last text to Eve, she specifically stated that they were a gift. ‘They’re all yours,’ she said. I read it myself,” he added, as if this made the claim indisputable.

  “Maybe she was more than just a friend.” Fiona’s tone hinted at a deeper intimacy between the women.

  “No.” Finch rubbed a hand over his chin. “I seriously doubt that.”

  A moment of silence filled the room, a pause when everyone tried to separate the facts from conjecture and devise a plan to move forward.

  “Okay, look. This is what we do,” Wally said with a scowl that suggested a steep climb lay ahead. “Fiona, I want you to re-interview Edwards and at least two other crew members who worked on the bridge both nights. Get them on the record. And interview them s
eparately. If they confirm one another’s statements, then the story angle is this: the TV networks got their facts wrong. For once maybe we can reveal those glossy-faced camera-mongers for the narcissists they really are. Okay? So your story is not about Gianna Whitelaw, it’s about TV broadcasting generally and the local stations’ cavalier attitude to the facts. Next day, expect a rebuttal from them. If it comes, then you follow up and ask them to go on record about where they gathered their information. Unlikely they’ll ever get into that, but you never know. But if they refuse, we can claim a victory — and I’ll write a good ole-fashioned editorial about media irresponsibility. It’s been over a year since I’ve had a decent run at the local TV stations.”

  “Got it.”

  “And I want Fiona to handle that story, not you.” He turned his attention to Finch. “I want you to keep digging on the cell phone and thumb drive. And this missing computer. If you base anything on the diary — which I advise against, given the laws surrounding expectation of privacy — then photocopy only the passages you need and get Lou Levine to certify them as accurate copies before you return the diary to Gianna’s mother. And I don’t want anyone from the eXpress except you and Lou to read a line of Gianna’s diary. I’m going to order Jeanine Fix not to publish any of this until I’ve read what you’ve got. If Senator Whitelaw thinks we’re using his daughter’s diary to build the story, we’ll be sued up the yazoo. Understand? I’m talking about extreme prejudice.”

  “Okay boss.” Finch tried to disguise his relief. Jeanine was completely reliable. The fact that Wally had set the diary out of bounds to everyone else meant that no one could get the story past Jeanine, and therefore no one would discover the references to his night with Gianna. He couldn’t have hoped for more. He’d revealed that he had the diary in his possession, the one document that exposed his breach of ethics, and Wally had banished it from their world — apart from a few selective references he could use with Lou Levine’s blessing.

  Then he recalled that he’d given the diary to Eve — and promptly walked out on her. Could he get it back? Maybe; he still had her flash drive. Would she exchange one for the other? One more problem to solve.

  “Another thing, Fiona.” Wally grimaced as if he didn’t want to continue. “Ask Edwards if anyone found Gianna Whitelaw’s shoes beside the bridge railing.”

  “Why?”

  “They always take their shoes off before they jump.”

  A bewildered look crossed her face.

  “It’s true. In fact fifteen, maybe seventeen years ago when I wrote the arts beat for the Post, I covered a ‘found art’ installation in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art. It was a collection of shoes. Hundreds and hundreds of pairs of shoes lined up on a raised platform and railing resembling the bridge sidewalk and handrail. Some psycho artist claimed he’d scavenged them from jumpers. After the fact,” he added with a look of disbelief. “Only in San Francisco.”

  His mood shifted and the ear-to-ear smile settled on his face again. “All right let’s get to work. Always remember one thing: This world can’t function without reliable information. That makes our work indispensable. But only if we’re accurate. ”

  ※

  Finch rounded the corner at the top of the staircase in Mother Russia and spotted his house-mate sauntering toward him.

  “Sochi, got a minute?”

  Sochi had an air of pre-occupation and for a moment Finch hesitated, wondering if the redheaded cyber-geek would be put off by Finch’s request.

  “Depends.”

  “Don’t worry.” Finch waved a hand. “I can put this off ’til later.”

  The dismissal struck Sochi’s sense of curiosity. He stepped toward Will and smiled through the nest of his beard. “Okay. Just tell me what you need.”

  Finch opened his hand to reveal the thumb drive. “It’s password-protected. I need to crack the password just to open the drive.”

  “For a story you’re working on?”

  Finch nodded.

  “Anything to do with a crime?”

  “Maybe. You never know until you get there, but I think so.”

  “Did you try the word ‘password’?”

  “Yeah. And all the number series to ten. “One, two, three, four…. ”

  Sochi tipped his head, a nod of approval. “All right. Come inside.”

  He wagged a finger and Finch followed him into his condo. Once again, Finch was impressed with Sochi’s physical presence. The man stood close to six feet tall and was built like a fullback. Below his untamed beard he bore a slight belly paunch, possibly the result of years spent hunched over a computer screen. Overall, Sochi gave the impression of computer-geek masquerading as a Viking prince.

  Unlike Finch’s tidy, luxurious living room, Sochi’s apartment appeared to be a repository for decades of technological cast-offs. Steel racks lined the walls, all of them stuffed with layers of hard drives, fans, cords, monitors, audio and video systems, and hundreds of other peripherals and gadgets. Part museum, part science lab, part bunk house. Yet Sochi seemed at home as he rooted his way through the open boxes and stacks that marked a path from the door to the far wall where his computer station sat at the ready, the screen-saver laddering through an Escher-like labyrinth.

  “All right, let’s see what we can do.” Sochi wheeled a guest chair beside his own Haworth Zody chair. He grasped the thumb drive and plugged it into his machine. A moment later a box appeared on the screen requesting a password for the drive.

  “Single entry.” He muttered at this bit of simplicity, and then typed “password” into the text box. The phrase wrong password returned to the screen.

  “No surprise,” he said and then keyed in a series of number combinations that all failed to open the drive. “Okay, next best guess defaults to family and pet names.” As he spoke, he typed f-i-d-o into the text box and hit the return button. Result: wrong password. “Do you have any of those?”

  Finch shrugged. “Not a clue.”

  “No-no!” Sochi waved a finger in the air. “Never, ever utter those words aloud. Otherwise your paymasters will begin to question your intelligence.” He laughed and smiled at Finch, waited for him to join in on the joke.

  “Ha.” Finch tried to look amused while Sochi continued to fire random passwords at the flash drive.

  “Okay. A bit of luck. Looks like there’s no limit-login barrier, meaning we can try any number of passwords without being blocked. We’ll put Rasputin on the job and see what gives.” Sochi clicked an icon on his screen, entered an extended password, and watched the software program tick through a start-up routine.

  “What, or who, is Rasputin?”

  “An app I’ve developed over the last dozen or so years. Then last winter I developed some quantum computing solutions to allow him to open RSA algorithms. Think of Rasputin as a robotic safe-cracker who tries to break a password beginning with the most simple lock combination: zero. If it’s rejected, he adds another digit or alphanumeric character, tries it, and continues with the growing chain of possibilities, which is limitless.”

  Finch leaned back in his chair. “Doesn’t that mean it could take forever to crack it?”

  “Once upon a time, yes. But with quantum cryptography, forever isn’t really a meaningful term.” Sochi clicked the thumb drive icon on his computer screen. A blue aura illuminated the icon image and Rasputin immediately began to attack the code. “The real key is the quantum processor — which allows Rasputin to simultaneously devise and apply new combinations in the set of all possible passwords. You also need a series of air-gaped, networked computers.” He waved a hand at the stacks of computers quietly humming on the steel racks around the room.

  “What’s air-gaped?”

  “Never connected to the internet.”

  Finch considered the simplicity of this measure. “So no one can get into it.”

  “A bit old-school, but otherwise Rasputin is state-of-the-art.”

  “So now we wait?”


  “Yes. But it’s likely to take less than a week. Or maybe just five minutes. The longest I’ve had to nurse Rasputin through a trial is eighteen days. It took that long to generate enough passwords, the last of which cracked the code. That was for a NASA project locked up by a disaffected employee who’d just been fired. Think for a moment: without Rasputin, the guy could have shut down the International Space Station!” He let out another horse laugh. “You can see why I’m always up-dating the software. Just to keep pace with the hackers.”

  Sochi reclined in his chair, wove his fingers together behind his neck and stared at the screen.

  “Yeah. I can see that.” Finch tested the flexibility of his chair and after staring for a moment at the image of the thumb drive glowing on the screen, he set the crown of his head in his interlaced fingers and tipped backwards so that his posture matched Sochi’s.

  So, he thought, this is what it’s like to work in cyber security. Scintillating brilliance steeped in a pot of lukewarm boredom.

  ※ — NINE — ※

  “I’VE GOT JAKE Edwards and two of his crew members on record.”

  Finch turned his attention to Fiona, who peered over his cubicle divider with a self-congratulatory smile blooming on her lips. She was five-five, maybe five six, he figured, and as a result she appeared as a decapitated talking head, blue and green streaks of hair cascading past her ears.

  “So there was no access to the bridge sidewalks that night?” He waved a hand to his guest chair.

  She settled beside him. “Or the following night.”

  “And no shoes?”

  “No shoes.”

  They paused. Will glanced away, wondered if this absence of evidence implied anything meaningful. “Okay. Timeline: she returned to the city on Monday, May eighteenth. Late that afternoon, dinner with her mother. Her final post on Facebook, her so-called suicide note, was early Tuesday morning. As far as we know, that was her last communication to anyone. Edwards and his crew were working on the bridge on Monday and Tuesday nights?”