She looked first to her right, then to her left as if searching for the appropriate direction to take. Not an employee.
She spotted him and headed his way with purpose.
She was short with dark messy hair that made her look like a pixie who had recently rolled out of bed. When she stopped in front of him the top of her head barely met his chin even though she was wearing what looked to be three-inch-high black pumps.
“You got a cigarette?”
The question caught her off guard. Then she assessed him. “Just quit, huh?”
“Okay, now you’re messing with me.”
“Quit years ago. The patch helped.”
He pushed up the sleeve of his already-rolled-up Oxford shirt. On his upper arm was what looked to be a large Band-Aid.
“Give it time.”
“Right. Oh, by the way, I’m police Lieutenant Mark Hernandez. I’m investigating a homicide. And you are?”
The woman reached into the small purse that hung over her shoulder and pulled out a square wallet Mark recognized instantly as identification.
“Special Agent Eleanor Rodgers. FBI.”
She flipped open the wallet for him to see.
He studied it and saw that it was legit. “Don’t you guys always come in twos?”
“You’ve been watching too many movies. What’s the situation?”
“The situation is that Denny Haskell, partner and senior programmer, is dead. Murdered. His car was urged off a cliff where it burst into flames. Dominic Santos, another partner and CEO, is missing. The wife hasn’t seen him since the night before last. The only person we know he talked to was his vice-president, Steven Ford. He called Santos here at his office yesterday morning to tell him about Haskell. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since. I’ve got an APB out on him but so far no luck.”
“You think he did it?”
Mark shrugged his shoulders. “I sure would like to talk to him about it. What’s the FBI’s interest in this?”
“The company is about to be awarded a prominent government contract to supply encryption software for the electronic data transmission of medical claims.”
“Huh?”
“Washington was going to give Santos tax dollars. A lot of them.”
“Checking up on the investment, then,” Hernandez decided.
“Denny Haskell was Encrypton’s head programmer. The government needs to know what’s going to happen next. I’ve been sent to monitor the investigation and report back to my superiors. I’m not here to interfere.”
“Encrypton,” Mark said. “Isn’t that where the super-hero is from?”
“That’s Krypton.”
“Right. Right.” Like he didn’t know where the super-hero was from. But he figured with the FBI it was always best to play the part of the local yokel. The less credit she gave him, the more obvious she might be regarding her motives. Besides, he knew with the FBI that there was usually more to the story. “You found out about this pretty quick. That identification says D.C.”
She hesitated for just a beat. “Haskell’s death was picked up on the wire yesterday. I was told to come out here immediately and check it out. I wasn’t aware that Mr. Santos was missing until just now.”
“Why you? I mean, why not some S.A. from the L.A. or San Francisco office?”
“I have a particular talent.”
He lifted his brow. “That sounds interesting.”
She smirked and he sensed he gave away his lurid thoughts. But really, a pixie with a particular talent? There was no way he wasn’t going there.
“But you don’t smoke, so sadly you’re no good to me. Also, you’ve got something on your nose,” he told her brushing the right side of his own nose.
She swiped at it, but the tiny red mark remained.
The elevator door dinged and this time a haggard-looking guy, tall, blond, typical California, got off. Hernandez had already spoken to him. The third partner.
“What you’re thinking is ridiculous, Detective. Serena just told me that you actually suspect Dominic.”
“Until I can talk to the man…yep.”
Steven ran his hand through his hair and looked over Mark’s shoulder to the open door. “What’s he doing in there?” he said, indicating the officer standing in Dominic’s office.
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
The elevator dinged again and this time another cop got off and made his way toward Mark.
“You got it?”
“Yes, sir.” The officer handed over a folded piece of paper.
“You got a cigarette?”
“You quit, sir.”
“Everybody is a freakin’ Goody Two-shoes.”
“What’s that?” Steven asked.
“A warrant to search.”
“What do you hope to find? Denny’s car was pushed off a cliff. I doubt you’ll find a murder weapon here.”
“Just a second,” the pixie interrupted. “If Haskell’s car went over a cliff, how can you be sure it’s murder? Maybe it was a hit and run?”
Mark looked at her. His instincts, which he considered to be flawless, were screaming at him. Warning. Warning. But since there was nothing he could really do about it, he decided to play it out. “It wasn’t. There was another car on the road. And the skid marks of the second vehicle lead us to believe it was deliberate.”
“So tell me again what you’re looking for,” Steven said.
“I sure would like to get a look at Santos’s computer. I imagine there’s a lot of stuff on it.”
Steven laughed harshly. “You think a warrant is going to help? You’re not going to be able to get past his security.”
“Surely somebody has to know his password.”
“Serena does but only sometimes. If he needs her to access something for him when he’s off-site. But he always changes it right after that.”
Mark cursed. He’d just sent the woman home. He turned to the officer with the warrant. “You know anything about computers?”
“I know they turn off and on,” he answered. “I’m going to check in with the station and see if we got anywhere with the prints we took.”
“The only thing I know about computers is they break when I touch one,” Mark said humorlessly.
“I can help.”
Mark and Steven looked at the agent.
“My special talent, remember? I’m guessing this is Santos’s office?” She strode through the door and sat at the desk. The PC was left on; just the monitor had been turned off. When she pressed a button on its side the log-in and password box came up on the screen.
“So what do you do now? Guess?” Mark asked suspiciously leaning over her to watch her work.
“Guessing isn’t my talent,” she informed him. She hit a series of keys until the password screen was replaced by a blue screen with text covering most of it. She continued to navigate the menus using function keys and typing in commands. Five minutes later, she was once again looking at the password box. This time, she hit the Escape key and suddenly she was in.
The screen background was solid blue with the icons neatly arranged down the right side.
“What do you want to look at?” she asked Mark.
“I can’t believe you got through it,” Steven muttered.
“A flaw in the operating system. We just discovered it recently.” she told him. “You all need to think about moving away from standard password protection. Do you know where Haskell saved his programs? On the network?”
Steven shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. I never paid much attention to his work. My job is the money.”
“Hey,” Mark stopped her. “I’m running this little show, remember. And I don’t care so much about Haskell’s programs as I do about what Santos was working on.”
She rolled her eyes. “Obviously, the two have to be linked.”
“There’s nothing obvious about it,” he sneered. “I want the last thing Santos might have been working on. Can y
ou do that?”
“Sure.” The pixie computer whiz FBI agent picked up the mouse and started to navigate through a series of windows as quickly as she breathed.
It was almost dizzying. Mark looked away from it and focused his attention on the last partner standing. “Why don’t you tell me again what he said to you on the phone.”
Steven groaned “We’ve been over this already.”
“You’re the one who thinks he couldn’t have done it. One more time won’t hurt anyone.”
“The police called me. They said they found my home number listed first on Denny’s cell phone. It was in the glove compartment and survived the fire.”
“Do you know why?”
“He might have been planning to call me for some reason. I don’t know. It’s weird. He never called when he wanted to talk to someone. E-mail was his only form of communication. At least with me. How long he’d had my number, who knows?”
“Okay, okay,” Mark said calming the man down. He didn’t want him on the defensive. Defensive people rarely gave detailed answers.
“Anyway they called me, told me what happened. They told me that the crime scene was suspicious. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I called Dominic at home and Caroline answered. She said he’d gone into the office.”
“What time was that, when you called her?”
“Early. I think the police called me just after four in the morning. This would have been about four-thirty.”
“And is that normal? For Santos to be at the office at four-thirty in the morning?”
Steven sighed. “He’s a workaholic so it’s not totally out of the question but something she said led me to believe that he’d been at the office all night. Again, not completely off the wall. It wouldn’t have been the first all-nighter he pulled.”
“Then you called here,” Mark prodded gently.
“Yes. I called his direct extension and he answered. He started to say something, but I told him about Denny and he stopped.”
“What was he trying to say?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t really listening. I was about to tell him that Denny was dead. It was hard enough to process that information let alone share it.”
“How did he respond?”
“He hung up the phone. I tried to call him back but he wouldn’t pick up. I figured he was in shock. I know I was. Hell, I still am. Why would anyone kill Denny?”
Mark assumed the question was rhetorical, but he asked him anyway. “Why do you think?”
“I have no idea. He was a misfit. A computer geek. He spent the largest portion his life staring into a monitor. His interactions with people were few and far between. I can’t imagine he ever got close enough to anyone to make an enemy.”
“Do you know what he was working on?”
“I told you, I didn’t follow his work. Although he was busy with a project, something he said was huge, but then he told us he was dropping it. Nobody knew what it was. Dominic was going to talk to him about it.”
“Two days ago, you said.” Mark remembered what he’d told him previously. Mark remembered everything, it’s what made him a good detective. “Two days ago, Dominic talked to Denny about the project he was working on. That night Denny is murdered. You tell your partner the next morning and he vanishes. You didn’t wonder where he was yesterday?”
Steven paused. “I guess I figured he went home. To be with his wife. I didn’t come into the office until later.”
“I have what you’re looking for,” the agent announced.
Both Mark and Steven looked over her shoulder to the monitor.
“That last thing he did was open this.” She clicked on an icon and a picture of a woman Mark knew to be Santos’s wife filled the screen.
“Ahhh, isn’t that sweet,” Mark cooed sarcastically. In truth it revealed a lot. The man was obviously smitten with her. A smitten man might not want to run too far. “Please tell me you can find the second-to-last thing he did.”
She clicked on another icon and opened the last file that had been worked on.
“That’s the company’s financial statements,” Steven said recognizing the figures on the screen instantly. “We needed them for our presentation before the subcommittee. Something is wrong. Those numbers aren’t right.”
He pushed closer to the screen and took control of the mouse moving the page down. “What the hell…”
“What is it?” Mark squinted, but didn’t see anything but a bunch of numbers. Big numbers.
“I need to sit there,” Steven said to the agent.
She vacated the seat and Steven took her place. He clicked open a few more tabs and studied them.
“What is it?” Mark wanted to know.
Steven opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Too late,” Mark said instantly recognizing that whatever Steven had found wasn’t good news for his partner. “Don’t make me haul you down to police headquarters for questioning.”
“These numbers aren’t correct. They’re not what I gave him,” Steven said, the shock evident in his voice. “There’s two million dollars unaccounted for.”
“You’re telling me he stole two million dollars from his own company.”
“I’m telling you two million dollars is unaccounted for. There’s a listing on these financials for a consulting firm whose services we never used. And the cash total is off that amount from when I finished the statements. I would have to check our accounts at the bank to be sure, but I know these numbers like the back of my hand. And that total is wrong.”
“Who else would have had access to the statements?” Agent Rodgers asked. Mark shot her a look. So much for not interfering. She pretended she didn’t see him.
“No one. Me and him. This is insane,” Steven insisted. “Dominic wouldn’t do this.”
“Which?” Mark wanted to know. “Steal or kill.”
“Either.”
For a moment there was silence. Then the officer who had brought Mark the warrant stepped back into the office. “Sir, a word?”
Mark left the two behind the desk. “We got some hits on the fingerprints we ran. Take a look at this.” The younger man passed him a fax.
Mark let out a low whistle. “Get out. The geek was a con?”
“So was the partner.”
“Santos?”
The officer shook his head. “Not his real name. The prints we lifted from this office match Dominic Butler, onetime resident of the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, the same pen Haskell called home.”
“What was he in for?”
“Assault.”
“How long ago?”
“Seventeen years.”
“Shit, he was just a kid.”
“Pretty much. He went in at twenty, came out eighteen months later. Kept every appointment with his parole officer the year following, then disappeared. Not a trace of him in the system after that. He must have gotten somebody to forge him a new birth certificate. Because not long after, Mr. Dominic Santos, without a criminal record, arrived on the scene. He got a social security card, a license, opened up a checking account and got a credit card. Anybody looking might have found it strange that his life seemed to begin the year he turned twenty-three.”
“Yeah, but if he never screwed up…”
“Then nobody would have bothered to go looking,” the officer finished.
“Dominic Butler. Con and corporate genius. Okay, thanks.”
Mark turned back to the office to find Agent Rodgers standing by the door. Steven was still behind the desk looking at the numbers, apparently trying to find two million dollars.
“You hear all that?” asked Mark.
“I did.”
“I’m kind of surprised the government wouldn’t have done a background check on the guy they were about to give all my tax dollars to.” He studied her face then, but she gave nothing away. A cool customer, this pixie was.
“The government is interested in the product, no
t the man.”
“At least this wraps it up.”
“How do you figure?”
“He’s got a criminal record.”
“For assault seventeen years ago,” she pointed out. “That doesn’t make him a killer. Just an angry kid.”
“It makes him a convict. And convicts are bad dudes. They don’t come out of the joint rehabilitated. They just come out pissed. Seventeen years is a long time to go before cracking, but they all crack eventually.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I still have to find him,” Mark said. “We have a warrant to search the house, too. I think I’ll talk to the wife again. She was freaked yesterday when I talked to her but she’s had time to calm down. And if anybody knows where he is, it should be her, right? I mean, the guy was ogling her picture. Eventually he’s going to contact her.”
“Your case. I’m just along for the ride.”
“I take it that means you’re coming.”
“You take it correct.”
“And if I have a problem with that?”
“You can talk to my SAC back in Washington and explain why the San Jose police department is refusing to cooperate with a government request.”
Mark laughed. “Yeah, I thought you were going to say something like that. You know you’re short for an agent.”
He watched her get pissed off and knew he’d done it just for the fun of it, which really wasn’t like him when he was on a case.
“I was recruited for my special talent,” she informed him coolly.
“Turn the computer off. I’m going to send a uniform up here to claim it as evidence,” Mark told Steven, who continued to shake his head in disbelief. “All right, Agent Rodgers, let’s go.”
Chapter 7
Caroline watched the men move through the house while Munch sat protectively by her side. A buzzing noise filled her head. The same sound she’d heard since she got the phone call from Steven saying Denny was dead. She tried to shake it off and turned her attention to the woman who had accompanied the detective.
She looked oddly familiar.
“Do I know you?”
The woman turned in her direction. “No,” she responded.
“This is Special Agent Rodgers from the FBI,” the detective introduced her as he walked toward Caroline. “She’s here as an observer only.”
Suspect Lover Page 6
