2 CATastrophe (5 page)

“The gunshot residue?” I asked, thinking of what Brett had told me earlier about the matter.

She nodded. “He was tested, but there was no sign of it. From the wound, death would have been instantaneous, so he couldn’t have taken off gloves or washed his hands. That meant someone else had to be there.”

“Was that the only discrepancy?” I asked.

"That was the biggest one, but there were others as well. For starters, Dr. Vires didn’t own a gun. The police never were able to show that he’d purchased a gun or any weapon. They acted like it was a minor detail, but he didn’t like guns. He wouldn’t have bought a gun under any circumstances. They attempted to trace the weapon from its serial number, but it had been filed off clean. No remains of it for them to pull.”

“So how did the killer get in or out if that was the case?” I couldn’t see a way around the locked door, which was the same issue that Detective Green was having with the current case. I wondered if perhaps if I solved this possible murder that it would provide a solution to Miller’s death. I could only hope.

“I have no idea. I read up on this. These are called impossible crimes. The killer could not have entered or left the premises to kill someone, and yet they did. The theories on these cases are that the crime has to occur before the doors are locked, while the doors are locked or after the doors are unlocked.”

I rolled my eyes. “That pretty much takes care of all the possible cases. All the timeperiods are covered.”

“So by my inferences, the murderer would have to get out of the room after the murder was committed. So at least we can narrow down the types of crimes it could be.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked, feeling like a rather stupid Watson to her Holmes right now, because this was definitely an amateur production. The whole thing had a surreal quality to it. I was sitting in a Starbucks, surrounded by baristas, while listening to a lecture on how a murderer could escape from a locked room. Who else had this kind of life?

“Two things. First, the gunshot residue wasn’t on his hands. That meant someone else shot Vires and left afterwards, since the police didn’t find the killer in the room. So he had to leave after the murder was committed.”

“That makes sense,” I agreed. “What about the second thing?”

“The room had two doors and two windows. I’ve been to visit that room. In reality, the murderer would only need to lock one door or window, not all four. So it would be easy for someone to manage to lock that door.” Her eyes sparkled with some emotion that I could not read, maybe excitement or perhaps revenge.

I hated to rain on her denouement but this was not as easy as it sounded. “It’s not exactly easy to lock a door without the key. I don’t even know if a locksmith can do that.”

“I’ve been to see the scene. Why don’t we go there now?” She stood to go.

I was wary of following this stranger anywhere. The alarms in my head that warned me about abductions and going places with people I didn’t know all sounded loud. Perhaps something like this is what happened with my sister. She’d agreed to go with someone who had offered a plausible reason to get in a car.

“Why don’t I drive myself?” I suggested. “I have an appointment after that, and I can just leave from there.”

“Suit yourself,” Dana answered, not sounding like she was going to abduct me at all. She gave me an address, and I started when I heard it.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, suddenly suspicious of me. Finding common ground was difficult when no one trusted anyone else.

“I know that address. Miller’s new business is that same building. I went there to ask questions about his business.”

Dana snorted at me. “That can’t be coincidence. I’ll meet you there.”

She picked up her venti latte and headed out to her car. Somehow, she’d stuck me with the bill, and I paid for both drinks before heading to the building.

She was already in the parking lot when I arrived. Barely waiting for me, she stormed into the building. While Advent had been on the first floor, the offices of Dr. Vires had been on the third floor. We took the elevator in silence. When we got to our floor, Dana led me to a particular office suite which was presently vacant. “This is it.” She tried the door, but it was locked tight.

I hunched down and looked at the lock. It was a sturdy lock in the knob variety with a keycard reader on the door jam. I studied the set-up, wondering if she expected me to figure out how Vires’ killer had done it. I talked to pets; I wasn’t a magician in any sense of the word. “What’s to stop the key card from being used?”

“They just added that device three years ago when the previous tenant was here,” she said without batting an eye. I wondered how long she’d been pursuing this case.

I studied the lock and the locking mechanism, but I didn’t see any way to easily lock the door from the outside without a key. “Couldn’t have someone have made a copy of the key and used that?”

“It’s highly unlikely. Vires had this lock changed here a few days before he committed suicide. They gave him a key the day of his death, and that key was still on his key ring when they found him.”

“Why would he want one lock changed? That feels suspicious to me.”

Dana nodded and leaned down next to me. We stared at the locks as if we had a clue what we were looking at. “Either security was breached,” she replied, “or else he’d lost his key. In either case, it has to do with the locks here. Any thoughts?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. I wish I could wrap this up and figure out what was going on, but I can’t. There are too many possible ways without being able to narrow it down to one or two most likely scenarios. If we had more information to go on, we might be able to find something, but I can’t just guess and hope it’s correct. The police will want more.”

“There’s one more weird thing. Vires only had the front door’s lock changed. The back door operated with the old key and old lock. I’ve never been able to understand why Vires would want to change one of the locks, knowing perfectly well that anyone could still come in the back way. It’s asking for trouble, if there’s been a security breach. If he’d misplaced the key, then he’d never be able to use the backdoor. So why then would he want to change just one lock? The police shrugged it off, but I think it’s important.”

We parted ways in the parking lot. I watched her drive off, and I wondered if I’d ever get to the bottom of these likely murders. My cases had been much easier when the crimes just centered on animals. Now I had computer apps, locked rooms, and cats following people around town. I didn’t know how I was expected to outwit the police, when they had the home court advantage.

As I stood there thinking, Adam Nelson walked out into the hall. He played with his phone, and I heard the click of the locks in the office door. I had a sudden realization.

“Adam, I hope you remember me. Griffin Fitzpatrick? How are you?”

“Are you back for more questions?” he asked as he put his phone back in his pocket. He wore a frown, and he turned his back to me almost immediately.

“No, I have just one very specific question. What’s the name of the app you just used to lock the door?”

He turned back, sporting a huge grin. “Isn’t this great? It’s a key replacement system. You can use this on a variety of standard locking mechanisms. You just need one additional rod in the door handle itself and you can use it.”

“Would you have to change the locks to do this?” I asked, thinking about what Dana had said upstairs about the new locks. Perhaps this had been another of Vires’ apps that Miller had later appropriated.

“That depends. If the lock was not compatible with the software and couldn’t be modified as needed, then yeah, you’d need to update your doors to ensure they have the proper locks to operate this app. Otherwise, you just need to take off the handle and add a rod. You can’t even see if a door has the mechanism unless you know what to look for.”

I nodded. “Can I download a copy of this? I’d love to have it for my home. I could do all the locks and not have to worry about keys again.”

Adam grimaced. “Not quite. There are a couple of issues with the app. The first is that it only works on one lock. I think that’s probably because the app is too far away from the other doors in the house, so it can’t manipulate multiple doors at the same time.”

I made a note to myself that I’d come up with an explanation of the first issue that Dana had addressed. Specifically, Vires had only updated the front door, and not the back door, because of the app’s need to be close to the lock it was manipulating. I felt certain that I was on the right track here, and that I might have solved Vires’ murder.

“What’s the other issue?” I asked, hoping to gather enough information to resolve the murders.

“James refused to ever put it up for sale. The one lock thing could have been corrected, but he adamantly refused. Even when the Great Recession rolled around and the company was losing money, he denied requests to introduce this app to market. It’s crazy, but it was his app, so what are you going to do?”

I thanked him for his time and got in my car. I nearly ran two stoplights during my drive home. I was that distracted by what I’d learned.

If this man’s story was accurate, and I had no reason to doubt that, then Miller had been responsible for Dr. Vires’ death. He’d had access to the app. He knew that the front door of the office could work by remote control via the app. Most damning was the fact that the app was never mentioned in the police investigation. There was no way that it could have been because Miller was not arrested and tried for the murder. If anyone can lock the front door, then the previously locked room suddenly becomes as open as a meadow.

Added to that was the rationale for why he’d never wanted to sell that app in the marketplace. If he did interviews or advertisements on the lock replacement app, eventually someone, whether it was Dana Cavanaugh or the police, would see the hoopla and quickly put together that Miller had used the app to kill his boss and father-in-law. That was a very good reason to keep the app to himself.

I sighed deeply. Even though I’d explained the death of Dr. Vires, I had done nothing about the case of Miller’s death. All I’d done so far was to convict my former client of murder. And while that helped me plenty in providing a motive for whoever had killed Miller, it did nothing to explain his death, since Miller was obviously not responsible for the second death – his own.

The problem as I saw it was that Vires had been killed by a gunshot to the head. The police had no idea what had killed Miller. Had he been so scared when he realized that the same app was being used on him that he’d used on Vires that he’d had a heart attack? I didn’t even know if Miller had any health problems. He’d sniffled a few times when I’d talked to him, but no one died from the sniffles. I wasn’t sure what to make of Miller’s death, but until I knew more about the cause of death, I still hadn’t solved this case at all.

The other thing that bothered me was that I was right back to where I was regarding the Miller murder. Detective Green had instructed me to stay away from the case. So I had by looking into Vires and how he was killed. Now it turned out that it was impossible for both murders to have been committed by the same person, so I was back to square one in trying to find out what killed Miller.

Less than square one actually, since I was forbidden from investigating anything related to the murder. All I had done was create a motive for Miller’s motive.

I sighed and decided to share all that I had found with Detective Green. She couldn’t yell at me for investigating the Miller case and the information might come in handy for her in her current case.

She wasn’t at her desk, but I left a message. I killed time by taking Bruno for a long walk in the neighborhood. He hadn’t been out, just the two of us, in a few days, and we took our time sniffing and marking everything in the neighborhood. Even marking gave me clues about how a dog feels, so I watched Bruno, though I felt a bit insensitive watching his bathroom habits.

We returned to the house, just in time to see Green get out of a car in my driveway. “What do you mean that you solved a murder? Didn’t I tell you to stay out of this?”

I gave her a big smile. Bruno was tired and only made a half-hearted attempt to jump on her before he rested at my feet. “You told me not to investigate the Miller case. I solved the Vires case. Totally different.”

“Still a murder and still off-limits to you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stood feet spread apart like a giant statue of disapproval.

I shrugged. “Technically, that’s not true. The Vires case was labeled a suicide, and so no one is investigating anything. I’m not breaking any laws by asking some questions about a closed case of suicide.”

Her arms dropped to her sides, but her eyes still flashed anger. I’d gotten around her direct orders through loopholes. While I was in the clear as far as the law went, she was not happy with me and was willing to make that known.

“So what’s your theory on that case?” she said finally. Her curiosity had beaten out her anger at my manipulation of the rules.

I explained about the changed locks on the front door of Vires office and the discovery of the app that would lock or unlock a door automatically. I went through all of the things I’d learned about locked rooms from Dana and tied up the case neatly.

She sighed. “It doesn’t change anything. Yeah, the police might have looked at the case more if they’d known about the app, but how does that tie to this case?”

I explained to her what Brett had told me about Vires’ work and the apps that had been developed from that. “Miller took those apps and made a fortune from them. So it stands to reason that he’s the one who killed Vires. So anyone who had a desire for revenge would have a motive for this murder.”

“Only if they knew what you figured out. Obviously the police didn’t figure that out, so it wasn’t obvious to everyone. You would have to know about the app, and you’d have to know that Miller profited from the crimes. It’s definitely not open and shut.” I could read her like one of my pets. She was interested now. Her guard had come down; she was less defensive and her voice held a thrill of discovery and satisfaction. “Old-time cops always tell me that if the original officers did their job that the name of the perp will be in the cold case file. I guess they were right again. And it would explain why Miller was unwilling to release that app when times were tough.”

I cleared my throat. “Since I’m being a good citizen and not investigating this, there are two things that you could look into.”

She smirked. “You’re being a good little citizen? Since when? Did I blink and miss it?”

I chose to ignore her comments. We were getting along – somewhat and I wanted to keep that détente going. “The first is to talk to Adam Nelson at Advent. Who else had that app? You could check everyone’s phones and see if it’s downloaded. Theoretically, anyone who knew Miller could have downloaded the app and used it. They’d just have to connect to the host computer.”

“Do you really think that a killer would be stupid enough to keep that app on his or her phone? It’s not available to the public, so it would nearly be an admission of guilt if they got caught with it, especially now that we are on to its abilities.”

“You really have to ask if criminals are stupid? I’ve heard some of your stories.”

She nodded. “Yeah, what was I thinking? Of course they are. So we can follow up and ask to see the phones of some of the people associated with the case. I’d need a warrant to demand it, but since the actual case has nothing to do with phone, I likely couldn’t get one. I can just go off who denies my request. That’s not enough to prove anything, but it certainly could allow us to focus on one suspect, which is always helpful. You don’t even know if the doors at the Miller house would work with the app. If I were Miller, I’d make damned sure that they didn’t work. I would think that I’d be a little too nervous about someone trying that on me. After all, it worked well the first time.”

“But someone did do that to him. It can’t be coincidence. The crimes have to be related because of the way they were carried out. How many locked rooms do you get in a year?”

She gave me a blank face. “Try zero in my career. They don’t exist outside of the occasional murder mystery story.”

“So these two cases have to be related. That’s the first thing you can look at.”

“Geez,” she said, “there was enough there that I thought that was more than your two suggestions.”

I shook my head. “The locking app was the first one. The second is Miller’s ex-wife.”

“You think she’s good for this.”

“You tell me. You know that your then husband killed your father using an app that your father had created, claimed all the royalties and rights for himself, and then dumped you for someone else.”

Sheila pulled out a notebook and started writing things down. “She waited long enough though to get revenge. This has been like eight years. Why not just do it then?”

I shrugged. “No telling, but she’s definitely got the motive. You’ll need to look at the financials for Miller and his ex-wife. How much did she get from the divorce? I’m betting she didn’t get anything from the business or her father’s apps. Some of the apps were released until after Vires’ death, so they would appear that they belonged to Miller.”