Best Laid Plans (18 page)

“We have no evidence that Elise is affiliated with Mona,” Barry said. “And how would she benefit from killing Worthington and trying to frame Everett? His alibi is solid, we confirmed it through hotel security that he was in his room during the time of death.”

“He could have hired her.”

“Why? And if he was involved in any way, why would Everett leave Worthington’s phone in a hotel room registered in his name?”

“Maybe she intended to kill them both.”

“Again, why?”

Barry was right in all his questions—and not having answers meant all they could do was speculate. At this point, nothing made sense. There was no motive, and while there was no doubt that a teenager could kill someone in cold blood, the way this all unfolded seemed too well planned.

“Maybe Elise is as much a pawn in this as Everett,” Lucy mumbled.

“What do you mean?”

“The taxi driver saw Elise leave, but that doesn’t mean she was the only one in the room with Worthington. And we still have no idea why Worthington went to the motel. There was nothing on his calendar, in his emails, or phone records that tells us why the spontaneous trip to San Antonio—Zach would have called us if anything popped up. And I keep wondering, why did Elise take his phone in the first place? She must know that cell phones can be tracked.”

“It could be that she or someone else wanted information on the phone,” Barry suggested. “But according to HWI, nothing on the phone had been downloaded, and the phone wasn’t used to make a call or go online after Worthington’s call to his daughter.”

“But what if she simply looked at information? Would the techs be able to know that?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“I keep notes on my phone. If I download them to my computer or update the note or send it to someone, there is a record. But what if I just read the note?”

“I have no idea. I’m pretty tech savvy, but I don’t know what logs are kept. I’ll ask our tech team about it.”

“We need to find Elise,” Lucy said. “She has the answers.”

Lucy feared for the girl. Whether she was a willing participant in Worthington’s death or forced to do it by someone who threatened her, or simply a witness to murder, Elise was in danger. It would be much easier to kill her than to trust her not to talk.

In fact, Elise might already be dead.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sean often lost track of time when he was working on something challenging. He’d already gone through his checklist—no one had hacked the HWI system, no one had used the HWI system to send suspicious documents, and no staff email raised any other red flags. One guy in the mail room stayed late every night to look at porn sites—Sean flagged his computer so Gregor could decide what to do about him—and one of the admins spent an unusual amount of time playing online games. Again, Sean flagged the person, but didn’t find anything in their behavior that said corporate espionage. He ran full diagnostics throughout the system to make sure there was no malware downloaded through third-party sites—porn sites were notorious for that—but the virus protection software that HWI ran was state of the art.

It could be that there was nothing to find—it wouldn’t be the first time that Sean had encountered a clean business. But he would go through each possible avenue of potential exploitation before he put his stamp of approval on HWI.

Once he determined that there was no overtly suspicious behavior, he dug down to the next level. He first verified that employees were only accessing the files their clearances gave them access to. Next, he looked at employees who had been there for less than a year. There were six, but only two with high-level access. While he ran full backgrounds on each of them, he looked at long-term patterns.

Most people who looked at computer data saw only numbers and words with no context. Sean saw patterns where others saw chaos. He first looked at the business as a whole—whether productivity was consistent within each month, quarter, and year. As would be expected in a CPA firm, activity peaked in April and October—tax-filing periods—with smaller peaks at quarterly intervals. Year-to-year productivity was consistent, once Sean allotted for increases in staff and clients. HWI had been growing steadily since Harper Worthington opened the business thirty-one years ago. He’d started as a corporate CPA and taken his first small government client two years later. After his firm was awarded a court-mandated audit of a state government program twenty-two years ago, he’d branched out into working more audits and government contracts than private. The breakdown was still pretty good—60 percent government, 40 percent private, enabling him to withstand any lulls in business from either sector.

Looking at how Harper Worthington ran his business, Sean grew to respect him. Harper was a smart businessman, if a bit more conservative than Sean would have been. He didn’t take risks, didn’t overspend, and had moderate costs. He provided employees with slightly above-industry-average income-and-benefits packages, including retirement plans, but no one person was paid out of line with anyone else in a similar position.

After a short break, Sean ran a custom program that would highlight changes in computer behavior over time—basically, if someone was using their computer in a different way now than they had in the past. The types of programs accessed, time spent online, the Web sites visited, printing or viewing documents, downloads. Changes in computer usage could mean a variety of things from innocuous, such as getting a promotion or change of software, to criminal, such as spending more time with certain files than an employee’s job should warrant.

One thing jumped out at him immediately.

Harper Worthington had almost completely stopped using the computer at his desk over the last four weeks. His login and password hadn’t changed, so Sean cross-referenced the computer IP addresses with the log that Gregor had given him, and determined that Harper—or someone with his password—was using a computer in another office.

Sean tracked Gregor down in his office. “Why wasn’t Harper using his computer?”

Gregor looked at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

“He was using a computer in a vacant office. Or gave someone his password.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Gregor rose and followed Sean down to Harper’s office. Sean had met Debbie Alexander, Harper’s admin, that morning. She was at her desk. “Debbie, Mr. Rogan seems to think that Harper wasn’t using the computer in his office. Was there a problem with it?”

“Is something wrong?” she asked, obviously confused.

“It’s an anomaly,” Sean said.

“Three or four weeks ago he took over the BLM audit—”

“BLM?” Sean asked.

“Bureau of Land Management. There were several boxes of files, and Terry—that’s our accountant who usually handles the BLM—is on maternity leave. Terry told him to use her computer because she had all the relevant documents in her office.” Debbie’s eyebrows scrunched together. “You know, Terry thought something was off with one of the boxes BLM sent. She wanted to come in and help Harper sort through it, but he told her to stay home with the baby.”

“Did Harper usually take over clients when someone went on leave?” Sean asked.

“Sometimes.”

“And use their office?”

Debbie was surprised by the question. “No, not since I’ve been here.”

“I need to see his computer, then Terry’s.”

“All the files, except for physical documentation, are on the intranet,” Debbie said. “They can be accessed from any computer.”

Sean ignored her because he wasn’t looking for the obvious.

He sat at Harper’s desk, ignoring both Debbie and Gregor, who watched him with blatant curiosity.

Why would Harper not use his own computer? Did he think something was wrong with it? That it had been compromised? Why wouldn’t he have said something to Gregor or the tech department?

Sean booted up the computer and used the admin code he’d created that morning so there would be a record of everything he did—important if anything he uncovered led to a civil or criminal trial or employee termination. He had already run system-wide diagnostics, but he ran diagnostics on a deeper level on Harper’s computer. Nothing popped—no viruses, no malware, no piggybacking of data. He checked the logs and found a deleted memo from Terry to Harper. It was a long email listing all the projects she was working on and who she’d assigned them to while she was on leave. At the end she wrote:

BLM has continued to send over documents, past our deadline, and there are a couple of discrepancies that I can’t seem to reconcile. I’ve asked for specific files—the memos are in the master file—but they claim they’ve already sent them. Maybe this pregnancy has made me more tired than I thought. Ian has been working with me on this, and can take it over while I’m gone. However, you might want to work with him because he hasn’t handled something of this magnitude alone. Everything is in my office— I pulled the questionable files from the storage room last week to give them another look through. Call me at home if you have any questions. I’m sure you’ll find the problem. ~Terry

“Debbie,” Sean said, “why didn’t Harper bring the boxes into his office? Or the conference room?”

“I never asked,” Debbie said. “Since my office is between Terry’s and Harper’s, I didn’t think anything of it. But I told the FBI agents who were here that Harper wasn’t quite himself for the last couple of weeks. He was distant, like he had a lot on his mind, but he didn’t say anything to me. Maybe I missed something.”

Sean walked back through Debbie’s office and into Terry’s much smaller office. It was crowded but immaculate. The boxes were neatly lined up and labeled, three high, under the solitary picture window. The desk was clear of work. “Debbie,” Sean said, “I need to talk to Ian.”

“I’ll call him in,” Debbie said and left.

Sean went back to Harper’s office. It was twice the size, with a second workstation in the corner and an adjoining conference room. There were photos of Harper and his wife, Harper and his daughter, Harper and horses, awards, his degrees, as well as a comfortable couch. The room was warm and inviting, but also said conservative and professional. Why hadn’t he moved all the files into the larger, more comfortable space? Why work at a colleague’s desk?

Sean skimmed through Harper’s emails. He’d exchanged several emails with Terry related to the files, mostly asking questions about what she’d done. Nothing that pointed to a crime or even a suspicion of a crime.

Sean leaned back in Harper’s chair and closed his eyes, ignoring Gregor’s unspoken questions.

Harper hadn’t wanted to work in this office. He’d changed his habits and worked in Terry’s office, at the same time that his behavior had changed, according to his admin. Sean wished he could call Lucy and ask if she had confirmed with his family or friends that Harper’s personal behavior had changed at the same time as his office behavior.

Clear change in behavior. Preoccupied. Didn’t use his own computer. Which meant he didn’t use his phone …

Sean sat up and typed rapidly on Harper’s computer.

“What?” Gregor asked.

Sean didn’t answer right away. He accessed HWI internal phone records and located Harper’s phone number.

Harper hadn’t taken any calls at his desk for four weeks. No ingoing or outgoing. Sean checked Terry’s extension—it had been used consistently during the time Harper was using her office. Which meant that even when he wasn’t working on the BLM audit he wasn’t using his phone or his computer.

Sean unplugged the phone from the wall. He then took his tool set from his computer case, unscrewed the handset, and carefully pulled it apart.

He turned it around so Gregor could see the bug in the mouthpiece. “He knew this was here,” Sean said. “That’s why he used Terry’s office.”

Sean inspected the bug carefully because he didn’t want to damage it. “Expensive. Completely undetectable unless it’s activated, and it’s activated only when he’s on the phone. This is high quality. Used by governments or well-financed criminals.”

“Can you trace it?”

“They may have turned off the receiver, which means there’s no way to trace it. And depending on how it was initially set up, I don’t know that it’s traceable at all. Unless we can get prints off the bug or trace the serial number. If I were the one bugging an office, they’d never trace the number back to me. Still—if it’s possible, I can do it. I need to get some equipment, and then I want your permission to bring in the FBI.”

“Of course. They’re investigating Harper’s murder. This may be connected.”

There were a couple of reasons Sean wanted the FBI involved, though he’d never consider bringing them in if Lucy wasn’t an agent. He wanted to leak information and give whoever had bugged Harper’s phone actionable intelligence—but nothing that would jeopardize the case.

He said to Gregor, “This only works if there are no other bugs in here, otherwise they already know our plan.”

“I already sent a message to the head of IT to sweep the entire building,” Gregor said. “Why didn’t Harper tell me about the bug?” He was both angry and hurt that his boss hadn’t trusted him, and not a little furious that someone had bugged the phone.