Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (28 page)

25

What I’m really looking forward to is when they catch me. The moment I crave is the one where they parade me out of the station in front of the cameras. I’ve been practicing my superior smirk. They won’t catch me for a while, though. I’ve got a lot of cops to kill.

While sitting in the conference room waiting for the next witness, Fenwick said, “I’m ready to go with a scenario where they all did it. We throw the lot of them in jail, and the computer age comes to an end.”

“Would that it could be that easy.”

“I’m the poet in this relationship,” Fenwick snapped.

“For which I am grateful,” Turner responded.

Molton marched into the conference room. “Your next interview is here, but I’ve got other news first. The detectives in Area One have the uncle of the kid Dwayne and Ashley shot in custody. They think he’s going to be charged.”

“No serial killer on Dwayne?” Fenwick asked.

“No.”

Turner mentioned the new messages he’d been getting on his computer.

“That could be significant,” Molton said, “but I’m getting reports that at least one detective in each squad in the city is getting similar crap. It seems that some loon has broken into the department’s server. We’re going to shut nonessential parts of the system down. After Micetic is done working with you, he’ll join the team of experts that we’ve got working on it.”

“We didn’t buy our security from Lenzati and Werberg, did we?” Fenwick asked.

“I have no idea,” Molton replied.

Turner explained the process by which Lenzati and Werberg sabotaged rivals, or at least discovered their secrets.

“Holy hell,” Molton said, “and clever to boot. If Micetic knows about it, I’m sure he’ll be taking that into account. I’ll check to be sure.” He left.

Fenwick repeated, “No serial killer for Dwayne.”

Turner said, “I was feeling less vulnerable when I thought it might be him.”

“Me too. I don’t want to think about being vulnerable again.” Fenwick might have a tough exterior but being blind to genuine fear was not one of his or Turner’s faults.

Before the next interview, they were able to ascertain that a number of cops in three of the six previous cities got warnings, but it wasn’t always the same cop that was eventually killed. Packages did come for some of the cops in all the squads of those who were killed. Anonymous packages that were not always sent to the victims.

“A random pattern,” Turner commented. “This is a very clever and determined killer.”

“Too good by half,” Fenwick said.

Warren Fortesque, head engineer from Lenzati’s and Werberg’s company, was their next interview.

Turner asked, “Who was the engineer in charge of the anti-hacker and security devices at the company?”

“Mostly Lenzati and Werberg handled those accounts. I had a team that worked with them. I was in charge of developing the programs, usually after they designed them.”

Turner said, “We have reason to believe they were using their security systems to break into other companies.”

He gaped in astonishment. “You’re kidding?”

“No,” Turner said.

“I know nothing about that,” Fortesque insisted.

“How could you not?” Fenwick asked. “You were in charge.”

“Of a team of developers. I don’t know about any sabotage. I tried to make sure companies were secure. I had nothing to do with breaking into anything.”

Fenwick asked, “Were you ever in their offices at Damen and Grand Avenue?”

“Never.”

“How could you not have been?” Fenwick asked. “Wasn’t that where all the work was done on the security systems?”

Fortesque said, “That’s where all the work must have been done on adding illegal or unwarranted changes.”

“How would you not know about that?” Turner asked.

“Because nothing illegal was ever done at our offices. I would know about anything illegal at the main office. There wasn’t anything. I ran a clean operation.”

“How did you oversee everything?” Turner asked.

“Pardon me?”

“Did you analyze each system?” Turner asked. “Did you inspect every program that went out? How were these sold? Could a company go to a store and buy them?”

“No. You had to call us directly, and we designed a system tailor-made for your company. I made sure people met deadlines. I helped in development or worked on problem solving.”

“Did you have to design a new system for every different customer?” Turner asked. “Isn’t that kind of expensive, and sort of like reinventing the wheel each time?”

“Believe me, these people could pay. Often we used one basic program, but we adapted each one to fit a particular company’s needs. In addition, we sold them guarantees that we would come and upgrade their service every three months for five years. We were the best. Those who wanted secure protection came to us. There were also weekly or monthly services for the ones who were more paranoid. Those were very expensive. Small companies could never afford them. There’s a lot of competition in this industry and there’s a lot of cutthroats out there. You need protection.”

“But Lenzati and Werberg designed the special packages for each company?” Turner asked.

“Yeah, the vast majority of them. Then different engineers worked out all the specific details, and created the programs.”

“How much did Lenzati and Werberg have to do with the final product for each of those companies?”

“They had as much or as little input as they wanted. If it was an especially big client or the problem a company was having was especially complicated, they liked to be directly involved.”

“Very possibly, every single system your company sold was sabotaged,” Fenwick said. “How could you not have noticed?”

“That’s the third time you guys asked me that. I’m telling you, my job was to work on the systems that I was told to and do the part I was assigned. Craig and Brooks could take and alter them any time they wanted.”

“I thought you were in charge,” Fenwick said.

“I was.”

“You don’t sound very in charge,” Fenwick said.

“I had no reason to kill anybody,” Fortesque said.

Turner said, “If the sabotage is the reason for the killing, and you were in charge of that section, I would assume that you would be in as much danger as Lenzati, Werberg, and Homan. If we assume it, why wouldn’t a person who was sabotaged assume it? If someone had hacked into your system and discovered what your company was doing, and they were bent on getting revenge, why wouldn’t they kill all of you? How would they know which person worked on which program?”

“That would be difficult. We don’t sign things.”

“Then how does anyone know who worked on what?”

“Well, we know that.”

“If you can know it,” Turner said, “I assume there’s a record of it, and if there’s a record of it, then someone can break into that record.”

“I could be in danger?”

“Very much so,” Turner said. Turner saw the sweat on Fortesque’s upper lip.

Fortesque said, “I need protection.”

Turner asked him where he was at the time of the murders.

“Yesterday my wife and I left early to go antique shopping up in Wisconsin. She enjoys that. We spent the night in a bed and breakfast in Lake Geneva. We got back this afternoon, did a little grocery shopping, and went home.”

His fear was palpable, but they got no further helpful information out of him.

Their last interview was Justin Franki, the surfer blond, the head of research and development. He said, “Once or twice, I had a niggling suspicion that something was going on. If you look at the companies that went broke and then at our hiring, sometimes it seemed kind of convenient.”

“Why didn’t you report that to someone?” Fenwick asked.

“To who? It was my job and my company. I certainly had no proof. I was never certain.”

Turner said, “The pattern we’ve been able to discover does seem very random. Sometimes they seemed to cause the other company to go broke just as kind of a joke, a lark.”

“They never did anything without a plan.”

“Even getting killed?” Turner asked.

Franki said, “They were smart. They wouldn’t do something stupid.”

“Maybe somebody caught them at their own game,” Turner said. “Maybe somebody hacked into their computers. Maybe they thought they were geniuses, smarter than everyone else—but maybe they weren’t. Or maybe, somebody got lucky. They were doing something illegal and dangerous. Who in your company would be most likely to know what they were up to?”

“I think Fortesque must have known,” Franki said. “How can he be head engineer of security development and not know?”

“Do you have any proof that he was aware of what they were doing?” Turner asked.

“Well, no.”

Turner asked, “How did you get along with Mr. Fortesque?”

“He’s a screamer. That’s how he communicates. He gets all red in the face and goes ballistic. Usually, moments like that preceded flashes of genius on his part, so nobody really minded.”

“You said you worked next to Eddie Homan.”

“Yeah. So what?”

Turner made the announcement. “He’s dead.”

Franki looked from one cop to the other, licked his lips.

“Where were you this afternoon?” Turner asked.

“Working on some computer programs at home. I’ve got logs to prove I was there.”

“I’d bet computer logs can be faked,” Fenwick said.

“That’s where I was. All weekend. I had no reason to kill any of these guys.”

Turner said, “In our first interview, you mentioned constant glitches in the programs you were working on when you had your own company. We don’t have all the data yet, but perhaps we’re going to find that they hacked into your company. Maybe they deliberately ruined you.”

“They hacked into my company?”

“We don’t know for sure yet,” Turner said, “but I think it’s a safe assumption.”

“That would explain it. I haven’t had a bit of trouble since I started here. Only when I was with my own company. I thought it was flaws in my design. It was them. The shits.”

Turner asked, “At the time you had no sense that anyone was tampering with your product?”

“No! I had no idea. Now that I know, if they were alive … those shits!”

His surprise and anger seemed genuine to Turner. He had as much of and as little of an alibi as the others.

After he left, Fenwick said, “How the hell are we going to get irrefutable evidence?”

“I have no idea,” Turner said. “Maybe somebody hacked into Lenzati and Werberg’s system. That someone could have altered records. That someone could have hacked into a bunch of other businesses. Maybe a business rival was doing to Werberg and Lenzati what they had done to them.”

Turner took all the data they’d gathered on Homan over to the corkboards. Fenwick followed him. “Why are you still adding to this thing?” Fenwick asked.

“I have no doubt that the three computer killings here are connected.”

Fenwick agreed.

Turner said, “But we don’t know about these others. We’ve got a lot of knife wounds and a lot of blood. And a lot of piss.”

26

The thing I hate most about cops is the way they strut when they walk. It’s an arrogance of the “in” group. It’s power and the presumption of authority at all times. I hate the arrogance. I hate the presumption. When I see them dead at my feet, the hurt goes away for a little while.

Micetic joined them at the corkboard. “The message on your computer screen that froze everything else out came from the computers at Lenzati and Werberg’s secret lab.”

“They were dead,” Fenwick said. “How could they be sending anyone messages?”

“Whoever killed them,” Turner said. “It’s only logical. The questions is, who would want to kill them and me?”

“I’ve got another possible scenario,” Micetic said. “Once their computers were opened up to the Internet, they were vulnerable. It doesn’t have to be their killer at all. They claimed they were geniuses without peer. Maybe there was somebody brighter than they were. Or at least maybe there was someone bright enough to break into their computers. Or maybe someone simply managed to co-opt their computers like they did when they brought down Yahoo and those other companies last year. Someone used remote computers that they could break into and then send messages routed through them. A killer would know doing that would screw up the investigation. You’ve got several murders. You’d never know how they were connected. If they were or not, you’d have a slew of new data that would, at the very least, confuse you or cause you to ask more questions, endless questions. It would cost you hours of work to sort through the mess, and you’d never know which was connected to which. At the most, of course, you’d never solve the crime.”

Turner said, “The killer was giving us millions of extra connections.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve got to sort them out,” Turner said. “We need more charts. We need to get the name of every company that ever got security from Lenzati and Werberg. Let’s get a profile of them based on all the data we can find. Then we’ll take all our suspects, including the sexual contacts we’ve managed to unearth. We need to profile everything we know about them. Anything any of them ever had to do with a computer needs to be on there. Then we’ll cross-reference all of that.”

Several hours later the new charts filled more than half of the corkboard. Fenwick and Turner examined their handiwork.

“It looks great,” Fenwick said. “I’m just not sure it’s much help.”

Fifteen minutes later Micetic, who’d been working at Fenwick’s computer, announced, “I’ve got Eddie Homan’s home address.”

“How’d you get it?” Turner asked.

“We had his Social Security number. It doesn’t take much once you’ve got that.”

Eddie Homan lived in a apartment just south of the Stevenson Expressway. The McCormick Place complex dominated the view to the east and north. His one room apartment was a pig sty. Dirty clothes were stacked in one corner next to a purple futon. There was no dresser. Atop the sink, pizza delivery boxes containing half-eaten pizzas, several at the bottom beginning to mold, were piled fourteen deep. The refrigerator was crammed with cartons, most of them partially filled with what was possibly edible several lifetimes ago. Homan did have four unopened bottles of Samuel Adams beer.