Moving Target (37 page)

“What secret weapon?” she asked.

“Leland Brooks.”

Even over the phone, Ali could tell B. was smiling. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“These are kids,” B. argued. “Geeky kids. How dangerous can they be?”

“One of their former star members happens to be both geeky and dead,” Ali pointed out.

There was a momentary silence. “All right,” B. said at last. “This probably isn’t something we should do on our own, so you make the call. We have a choice here. We can bring in the homicide cops you talked to, the ones who just left; we can call in the feds, who may already be tracking this because of what happened to Phyllis yesterday; or we can contact Detective Hernandez, the local guy, who, for one reason or another, seems to give a damn about what happens to Lance Tucker and his family. What’s your poison?”

“Definitely the local guy,” Ali said. “You call him while I get Connor and Leland gathered up and out of the house. I want them gone before the CSIs who are outside in the garage come inside to start tearing the house apart for evidence.”

Punching the off button on her phone, Ali entered the kitchen. As she approached the table, Connor looked up at her with concern. “Are the cops coming for me now?” he asked.

“No,” Ali answered. “They’re not. How would you like to go to Austin to see your brother?”

Connor’s eyes widened. “To see Lance? Really?”

“Yes, so maybe you’d better put on something besides those Spider-Man pj’s. If you happen to have a backpack, throw some extra clothes in that: some jeans, socks, underwear, shirts, and a jacket.”

“What about a toothbrush?”

“That, too.”

“Will I be able to stay at the hospital with him like Mom does?”

“That remains to be seen,” Ali said.

With that, Connor scampered off to his room. Clearly Leland had kept him so completely occupied with the game that he’d forgotten to miss his mother.

“What about the dogs?” Leland asked. “We can’t very well leave them here, can we?”

By the time Connor emerged from his room with his loaded back-pack, Ali and Leland had located two leashes and filled a grocery bag with Duke and Duchess necessities: dog dishes and cans of food.

“You’d better gather up the board and the checkers and put them in your backpack, too,” Leland directed Connor. “We’ll want to have those along to help pass the time.”

As Connor hurried to comply, the dogs, aware that something was up, were on their feet and milling around the kitchen. Leland called them, and they came at once, standing docile and calm as he fastened leashes to collars.

They left the house with Leland holding the dog leashes in one hand and Connor’s sturdy little hand in the other. Walking behind them, Ali couldn’t help but marvel: Leland Brooks was not a grandfather and would never be a grandfather, but he would have been a great one.

As they climbed into the Escalade, it was clear they weren’t leaving a moment too soon. The CSI techs were preparing to enter the house. Ali knew that she, Leland, and Connor would all need to be fingerprinted eventually; their prints, hers especially, would be found in any number of places, both in the house and in the garage. The dogs eagerly clambered into the car and plunged all the way to the far back.

“Wait,” Connor wailed once he was in the car. “We can’t leave.”

“Why not?” Ali expected him to offer some kind of objection about leaving his mother behind. He didn’t.

“I need a car seat,” Connor announced in all seriousness. “A booster.”

Ali had a momentary vision of the blood-and-brain-spattered mess that covered the booster seat in the back of LeAnne Tucker’s Taurus. “Just a minute,” she said.

Climbing out of the driver’s seat, she hurried over to the Honda, where she was relieved to see that Phyllis kept an extra booster seat in her vehicle. Ali grabbed it. The cloth seat reeked of stale smoke. In the Escalade, the foul odor quickly obliterated the spotless rental’s cheery new-car smell, but the presence of the stinky car seat was enough to overcome Connor’s objections. “Okay,” he said, snapping his seat belt. “Now we can go.”

A
li dropped Leland and Connor at a nearby McDonald’s that came complete with an indoor playground. She kept Duke and Duchess with her as she drove to the school.

San Leandro High was a sprawling campus with an immense parking lot and a cluster of buildings. The part of the lot closest to the athletic field was full of vehicles. From the bleachers a throng of fans cheered the opposing sides in an afternoon soccer match. Much closer to the buildings was a far smaller grouping of cars. She pulled up to that group of vehicles just as B. opened the door of one of them, unfolded his long frame, and climbed out. Naturally, the dogs went into full bark mode.

“I didn’t know that was you,” she said, climbing out and glancing at the unfamiliar vehicle, a Ford Focus.

“It’s the only car I could get delivered to the hotel in a hurry,” he said. “Maybe we can trade later. You can drive that one. The Escalade has more leg room.”

“Fine with me,” she said. “But you may want to stick with the car you’ve got until I get Phyllis Rogers’s pugs out of this one.”

True to form, the two dogs were on their hind legs in the driver’s seat, barking like crazy. “You’re right,” B. agreed with a laugh. “Given that, maybe my need for additional leg room is overrated.”

“Do you know where we’re going?” Ali asked.

He pointed to a group of four smaller, squarish buildings that stood at some distance from the main part of the school. “I asked,” B. said, “and was told they’re out here in one of the portables.”

Ali looked at the nondescript buildings, all of which had seen better days. “They’re no more portable than Chris and Athena’s mobile home is mobile,” she said. “Why do they call them that?”

“No idea.” They walked toward the building. “How should we play this?” B. asked.

“We don’t tell them about Jillian, that’s for sure,” Ali said. “Let’s try for something a little less inflammatory.”

The doors they tried on the first two buildings were locked. The third one opened. The room was filled with ten or so library-type tables, each holding a series of three old-fashioned PCs that might have been considered state of the art in the 1990s. They came complete with a jumble of cables that led down to electrical floor outlets and old-fashioned Ethernet connections. The fifteen or so kids sitting in the room had mostly pushed aside the keyboards on the aging school-owned computers and were engrossed in their own devices, leaving the taxpayer-purchased equipment to sit untouched in useless splendor.

A man in the front of the room glanced at the door as Ali and B. entered. “May I help you?” he asked, stepping forward to greet them. “I’m Martin Warren, the computer club adviser.”

“I’m B. Simpson with High Noon Enterprises. This is my associate Ali Reynolds. My company handles cyber security for the San Leandro school district,” B. continued. “We have some concerns that one or more of the computers here might be involved in unauthorized activity—by that I mean criminal activity.”

Mr. Warren grinned as he shook his head. “I doubt that. As you can see, most of the kids bring their own equipment these days. Only the ones who can’t afford laptops utilize these tired old PCs. They’re so low on memory that I finally gave up bothering to upgrade them. It was too time-consuming, and they’d crash again a day or so later. They’re mostly
useless. We keep them here for show because no one in the administration is willing to take the heat for throwing them away.”

“They’re all still connected,” Ali pointed out, looking down at the cable connections and electrical outlets under each table.

“Just because they’re connected doesn’t mean they work,” Mr. Warren insisted.

“If you don’t mind,” B. said, “we’d like to take a look at the serial numbers.”

“Sure,” Mr. Warren said with a shrug. “Help yourselves.”

They found the offending machine a few minutes later in the far corner of the room. Mr. Warren was correct. It was no longer working, but that wasn’t due to missing updates. When B. tried to turn it on, the words “Fatal Error” flashed across the screen before it went completely dark.

“Lance’s worm,” he said to Ali, and she nodded.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Mr. Warren asked. He rejoined them just as the dying computer went dark and shut down for good. “That’s odd,” he said. “These machines are all old, but I’ve never seen one of them do that before.”

“Does anyone in particular use this machine?” Ali asked.

Mr. Warren looked mystified. “No one,” he said. “This is a holdover from the district’s first generation of computer purchases. It’s not exactly steam-driven but close. That’s why it’s stuck back here in the corner.”

“It may become evidence in a criminal case at some point and a fingerprint tech will need to dust it for prints,” B. said. “If you don’t mind, please cover it with something and tell your students that it’s entirely off limits.”

Mr. Warren frowned. “This sounds serious,” he said. “May I ask what this is all about? Should I have asked for a warrant?”

“We’re not at liberty to say what this is about,” Ali said, “but I do have one question. How many kids are involved in this organization?”

“Twenty or so.”

“Did the group send someone to a hospital in Austin yesterday?”

Mr. Warren frowned. “Not that I know of.”

“The person brought a brand-new computer to a patient there, someone who used to belong to this organization. We were told it was a gift to him from the club.”

“What student?” Warren asked.

“Lance Tucker.”

Mr. Warren seemed to bristle. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I’ve never met Mr. Tucker, but I know him by reputation. Considering his record, I wouldn’t give that kid the time of day, much less condone my students giving him a computer.”

“What can you tell us about Jillian Sosa?”

Mr. Warren shrugged. “What’s to tell? She’s brilliant and an absolute treasure to have around, both in class and in the club. After Lance left and Mr. Jackson, the previous adviser died, the club was in danger of being disbanded. Jillian and Andrew Garfield worked like crazy to keep it from going under.”

“What can you tell us about Mr. Jackson?” Ali asked.

“Not much. I was his replacement, so I never met him. My understanding is that he took his own life,” Mr. Warren continued. “As far as I can tell, it was terribly unfortunate and unnecessary, and it was all over this.” He rolled up his shirtsleeve to reveal a blue plastic band that looked like one of those colorful bracelets people wear to show their affiliation with various kinds of charitable causes. “These stupid ID bracelets are just a way of keeping track of students and teachers. Jackson was offended and got some of the kids in the group up in arms about it, which resulted in that whole server disruption controversy. I agree the tracking system is a bit intrusive, but it’s nothing to get that excited about.”

Unless you happened to be a teacher who was screwing a student, Ali thought. In that case, that student/teacher locating program might present a very real threat.

“Getting back to Jillian,” Mr. Warren continued. “Some of the work she’s done this year would be what you’d expect from a graduate in computer science rather than a high school senior. Even without Lance’s help, she and Andrew walked away with the statewide competition. Considering the school district almost disbanded the club, that was a real coup.”

“Andrew would be Andrew Garfield?” Ali asked. “The school superintendent’s son?”

“Yes, he is that,” Mr. Warren agreed, “but Andrew doesn’t expect any special treatment. In this group, he’s just one of the kids.”

“Does he happen to be here today?” B. asked.

“Sure,” Mr. Warren said. “He’s the red-haired kid in the front row. Since Jillian isn’t here this afternoon, I asked him to work with some of the kids who are struggling. He’s smart enough in his own right, just not in Jillian’s league.”

“Could we talk to him?” B. asked.

“Sure,” Mr. Warren said, “I don’t see why not. Hey, Andrew, mind coming over here for a minute?”

A lanky young man extricated himself from a group of girls and sauntered over to where Ali and B. stood with his teacher. Ali knew the boy was a senior, which made him the same age as Lance, but he looked younger. Remembering that Andrew had been homecoming king to Jillian’s homecoming queen, Ali couldn’t help wondering if Jillian and Andrew had engaged in more intimate kinds of behavior, not unlike what the girl had been doing with the unfortunate Mr. Jackson.

“This is Mr. Simpson,” Mr. Warren said. “With . . . Who did you say again?”

“High Noon Enterprises,” B. supplied.

Ali noticed that the boy’s face paled. “You’ve heard of us?” she asked.

Andrew nodded.

“We understand you came to visit Lance Tucker in Austin the other day and that you brought him a computer, purportedly from the club,”
B. said. “The problem is, Mr. Warren here says that the club wasn’t the source of the gift, so I’m curious: Where exactly did the computer come from?”

“Jillian,” Andrew said. “She said it was sort of an early birthday present. She was afraid that if Lance thought she was the one giving it to him, he might not accept it. His family is kind of poor, you know. That’s why she said to tell him it was from everybody.”