Moving Target (34 page)

“Maybe,” B. answered. “Since you and Mr. Jackson created this together, what was your arrangement?”

“Fifty-fifty. It’s Texas,” Lance said in answer to B.’s questioning look. “We operated on a handshake.”

“Nothing in writing?”

“No, he didn’t want to feel like he was taking advantage of me, so
we agreed that once I was eighteen and old enough to sign a binding contract, we’d sell GHOST to the highest bidder. Mr. Jackson was hoping he’d have enough money to be able to stop teaching and do some traveling with his wife. I thought maybe I’d have my college education paid for in full.” Lance’s grin faded. “Except now Mr. Jackson is dead, and I’m not going to college. I’m hoping you’re still interested.”

“Oh, I’m interested, all right,” B. said, “but I have some questions. Mr. Jackson committed suicide on the day you were sentenced. Do you have any idea why?”

“People said it was because he blamed himself for what happened to me. That wasn’t his fault. Like I told you, I did that on my own. He objected to the school district buying into the tagging program, and so did I. I didn’t think they had any business knowing where I was every moment of the day.”

“Did I understand you to say that you still haven’t seen the final version of GHOST?” Ali asked.

“Not yet. Like I said, Mr. Jackson uploaded the last tweaks to the cloud after I was in jail. I won’t even try to access them until I can use a secure computer and a secure server.”

“What about the computer Andrew Garfield gave you tonight?” Ali asked.

“I’m worried it might not be so secure,” Lance said, “and I don’t trust the hospital Wi-Fi.”

“You were right to be worried,” B. said. “We were worried, too. I had High Noon run a diagnostic. We found a keystroke logger on it. Would Andrew Garfield have done that?”

Lance shook his head. “Maybe,” he said. “Andrew and I used to be friends, but I’ve been gone a long time. Maybe things changed.”

“You know he’s taken up with your former girlfriend in your absence?” Ali asked. “Andrew and Jillian were elected homecoming king and queen.”

“Jillian’s a wonderful girl,” Lance said. “She’s had a tough life. Her parents died. She had to come here to live with her aunt and uncle.
When I realized I was going to jail, I broke up with her. I didn’t want her to waste her senior year on the sidelines, waiting for me to get out. As for homecoming, Mom probably didn’t tell me about it because she thought it would hurt my feelings, but good for them. That’s something Andrew was working on last year. I’m delighted they pulled it off.”

“What do you mean working on?”

“Jocks and cheerleaders usually win those elections. Andrew was trying to fix it so someone else could win.”

“To rig the election, you mean?”

“I may be the best hacker at San Leandro High School, but I’m not the only one,” Lance said. “I’m just the one who happened to get caught.” When he turned back to B., all semblance of joking had fled. “Are you still interested in GHOST, Mr. Simpson?”

“Not sight unseen,” B. said. “And I’ll want a finished version, not a beta. If you give me one that has a Trojan in it, you can kiss your computer science ass goodbye. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I decide to make an offer, I’ll see to it that Mr. Jackson’s survivors are fairly compensated for his part in the development. Fair enough?”

In answer, Lance held out his hand. A shadow of Lance’s grin returned. “Remember,” he said, “this is Texas. A handshake works.” He and B. shook. “Now,” Lance added, “I need a piece of paper.”

Ali produced paper and a pen from her purse. Frowning in concentration, Lance spent some time working on the paper. When he handed it back, it contained two long lines of numbers and letters. “You’ll need the thumb drive to access the cloud account,” he said. “When you get there, choose the last GHOST file listed and open that—that’ll be the finished version. Once you open it, you’ll need both passwords—one initially, and one six hours later, when you get the error message. After that you’re good to go.”

Ali looked down at the two strings of numbers. “You remember all these?” she said.

“Sure,” Lance said. “Passwords are easy to remember.”

“Not for me,” Ali said.

It was a family joke that her original password, sugarloaf#1, was still her password. After the phone cloning, she knew she was destined to lose the password war.

With the sheet of paper tucked in her purse, Ali and B. left Lance’s room. Father McLaughlin was still at his post. He nodded to them as they passed.

“Are you really going to try opening GHOST on your computer?” Ali asked B. as they headed down the hallway for the elevator.

“Hardly,” B. said. “Do I look stupid? Trust but verify. I’ll have somebody in the High Noon world send a new computer to our hotel room first thing in the morning. I’ll use the thumb drive on that.”

“What do you mean, first thing in the morning?” Ali asked wearily. “It’s already morning here and sometime in the afternoon where we were yesterday. I don’t know about you, but I’m done for.”

“I take that to mean that checking in with no visible luggage is no longer a problem for you?”

“Don’t be cute,” Ali grumbled. “I’m too damned tired for cute.”

I
n their room, Ali fell into bed stark naked and slept without moving or dreaming. When she awakened hours later, B., backlit by sun shining in through the windows, was standing beside the bed, holding out his phone.

“It’s your mother,” he said. “Apparently, she’s on the warpath. I’m on my way to the shower.”

Ali tried to clear the sleep out of her throat before she answered. “Hi, Mom.”

“Where in the world are you?” Edie Larson demanded. “I called off and on all day yesterday. You never answered and you never called me back.”

Ali’s phone, still turned off and most likely totally discharged, lay in the bottom of her purse. She hadn’t remembered to turn it back on. “Someone hacked in to it,” Ali said. “I don’t feel comfortable talking on it when someone else might be listening in on the conversation.”

“Someone hacked your phone?” Edie repeated. “Can’t B. do something about that? Isn’t that what he does for a living, for Pete’s sake?”

“He’s been quite busy,” Ali said.

“I’m calling about tomorrow,” Edie said. “You probably booked a shuttle to get back home to Sedona after your flight from London, but
if you want, Dad and I will be glad to drive down to Phoenix to pick you up. Those shuttle rides aren’t very comfortable, especially if you’re already tired.”

“Thank you, Mom,” Ali said. “That’s kind of you, but we won’t be on that flight. We’re in Austin right now.”

“Austin?” Edie exclaimed. “As in Texas? How did you get there? What’s going on?”

Call waiting buzzed. “Mom,” Ali said, “it’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later. There was a sudden change in plans, and I didn’t have time to let you know. Right now, I’m on B.’s phone and he’s got another call coming in. I’ll have to get back to you.”

She caught a glimpse of the time as she switched over to the other call. It was after nine in the morning. She had slept for more than six hours.

“I’m looking for Mr. Simpson.”

The voice was familiar, but Ali couldn’t immediately identify it. “He’s in the shower,” she said. “This is Ali Reynolds. Who’s this?”

“Detective Hernandez, San Leandro PD.”

“What’s up?”

“Marvin Cotton is dead.”

“The arson suspect?” Ali asked. “How did that happen? I thought he was in police custody.”

“He was,” Detective Hernandez said. “He was in an interrogation room out at the jail. The detectives had been talking to him, but then he lawyered up. A guard was taking him back to a holding cell when some kind of altercation broke out. When the scuffle was over, Cotton was unconscious. He was taken by ambulance from the jail to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The guard is currently out on administrative leave. The sheriff’s department says the investigation is ongoing. I got a sneak preview of the tapes. No doubt the guard will claim self-defense, but if it were my call, I wouldn’t be buying it. The guard used lethal force when he punched Cotton in the throat. I think it was deliberate.”

“Are you sure you should be telling us this?” Ali put in.

“I’m sure I shouldn’t, but from where I’m standing, I know there’s a puppet master out there somewhere, pulling strings, and those strings may reach deep inside the law enforcement community. So far it seems to be confined to lower-level folks—guards and the surveillance technician, for instance—but what if it’s more widespread than that? What if it goes higher? I’m not a crooked cop, and I sure as hell don’t want to work with crooked cops. Cotton’s death means that all the urgency to investigate Lowell Dunn’s homicide just went out the window. Why clear a case that’s already closed? Ditto for the attack on Lance. Cotton is responsible, one and done. In the long run, the only people still asking questions about those incidents will be you.”

“What about the attack on Phyllis Rogers?” Ali asked.

“Traces of scopolamine were found in LeAnne’s front entry. That’s been declared a kidnapping and the investigation is in the hands of the FBI. If somebody local has been pushing things under the rug, it won’t go away quite as easily with the feds involved, and that’s a good thing.”

The bathroom door opened. B. emerged through a cloud of steam wearing the previous day’s rumpled shirt. That was when Ali remembered that their clean clothes and luggage were still in San Leandro. So was Leland Brooks.

Ali shoved B.’s phone in his direction and dug in her purse for her own phone.

“Who is it?” B. asked.

“Detective Hernandez,” she said.

While B. took over his phone, Ali located her own along with the charger. Once she had it plugged in, she dialed the San Leandro Inn.

“Good morning,” Leland said cordially. “I came down to breakfast without you. I hope you don’t mind. I thought you needed your beauty sleep.”

Ali flushed with embarrassment. “Leland, I’m sorry. We’re not there. We’re in Austin. Right after you went upstairs with the luggage last night, everything went nuts. We never went to our room. We came to
the hospital to talk to Lance Tucker. By the time we were finished, we were too tired to drive all the way back to San Leandro. Once I get dressed, I’ll come back for you.”

“That’s all right,” Leland said reassuringly. “Please don’t stress yourself. Come when it’s convenient. The hotel here is comfortable enough. After the day we had yesterday, I’m finding it rather pleasant to be in a room that isn’t moving.”

Ali hung up. With B. still on the phone in the living room of the three-room suite, Ali took her turn in the shower. She came out a few minutes later, grateful for the terry-cloth robe she had found in the closet. B. was on the sofa with a computer on his lap. On the floor was a scatter of used packaging materials. The low coffee table held a carafe of coffee and two cups. Ali stopped long enough to pour one for herself before sitting down on the couch beside him. By then the Transformer-shaped thumb drive was already plugged in and lit up. “Find anything?” she asked.

“GHOST is here,” B. said. “I’m assuming it’s the completed version, since it’s one of the last files Everett Jackson added to the cloud. I haven’t tried opening it yet. But there were a couple of much smaller files added after that. Take a look at this.” He moved the computer screen in Ali’s direction.

“ ‘Sorry’?” she read. “A one-word message? What does that mean?”

“I think it means that Everett Jackson was being blackmailed.” With a click, B. switched to a video entitled “Teacher’s Pet.” It was poorly lit and grainy but clear enough. The only prop in the picture was an old-fashioned teacher’s desk with a green blackboard in the background. What was happening on the desk may have been educational, but it was also X-rated. A naked young woman lay on her back with her legs clamped around the bare rump of the man moving on top of her. He was much older and almost entirely bald. Looking directly into the camera, she was smiling as though she knew the lens was there while he had no idea.

“Mr. Bare Butt is Everett Jackson?” Ali asked.

“It’s got to be. Why else would he have it? The porn video was posted one day prior to the day of Mr. Jackson’s overdose.”

“Is there a way to tell where the file came from?”

“It was probably e-mailed to him. With his livelihood at stake, he wouldn’t have left it on his computer any longer than it took to copy it and post it here. He probably erased the original in a hell of a hurry. I know I would have.”

“It might still be on the server,” Ali suggested.

“You’re getting good at this stuff,” B. said, “and you’re right. It might be, but someone would need to know to go looking. Luckily I happen to know just such a guy.”

“Was a suicide note found at the time?” Ali asked.

“No,” B. said. “I checked. So maybe that’s what ‘sorry’ means. The message on the cloud may be a suicide note intended specifically for Lance. Unfortunately, there’s also another possibility.”

“Which is?”

“That the blackmail demand to Everett Jackson was the same as the ransom demand sent to Lance in exchange for his grandmother’s safe return.”