Man Overboard

by J. A. Jance

  “What’s your passcode? Your birthday?”

  Beth nodded. Marissa keyed it in, touched a button or two, and then studied the screen intently.

  “Is it still there?”

  “Is what still there?”

  “The message from Corrine.”

  Frowning, Marissa studied the phone. “Joel’s ex has been texting you? But there’s nothing like that in your list of texts—nothing at all with her name on it.”

  “But it was there,” Beth pleaded. “I swear it was. I saw it.” That was the last thing she said before being wheeled out the door.

  “I saw it, too,” Beth’s rescuer said. “Let me take a look at that thing.”

  Without objection, Marissa passed him the phone. The man glanced at the screen and then spoke into the cell phone he was still holding to his ear. “She’s right,” he said. “There was a message here—a hate-filled, ugly text—and now it’s completely gone. You say Corrine’s the fiancé’s ex?”

  Marissa nodded, and the man gave her back the phone.

  “If she wanted your friend out of the picture,” he said, “she very nearly got her wish.”

  A pair of uniformed cops entered the bar just as the ambulance departed with a blast of its siren. Odin, sitting quietly at the bar, did his best to listen in while appearing to be nothing more than a disinterested bystander. When the cops aimed their questions at the black man, he identified himself as Ajax Porter, a volunteer with an organization called the SPI—the Suicide Prevention Initiative.

  Odin recognized the name. He knew from Frigg’s painstaking research that Amelia Cannon had founded the organization years earlier. Was she the connection here?

  “Wait,” the first cop said, pausing in the act of writing in a notebook. “That Ajax Porter? The one who used to be a linebacker with the 49ers?”

  “Long time ago, but that would be the one,” Ajax answered with a grin. “After I blew out my knee, I almost took myself out with pain meds. This is what I do now—work suicide prevention.”

  “So let me get this straight,” the cop said. “You came in here looking for the girl, the victim?”

  Ajax nodded.

  “How’d you know this was where she was and that she might be in danger?”

  It was hard to look disinterested while straining to hear every word, but these were things Odin needed to know, too.

  “Guy on the phone,” Ajax said. “He had some kind of phone tracker app going.”

  “Does this guy have a name and number?”

  “Stuart Ramey,” Ajax answered, then, peering at his cell phone, he read off the number while the cop jotted it down. So did Odin.

  “Stuart’s the one who figured out where the victim was, but the person who called in the SPI is Dr. Amelia Cannon, who used to be a therapist here in town. Beth, one of her former patients, had some kind of meltdown today. Dr. Cannon was worried that she might harm herself. Turns out she was right. Fortunately, whenever Dr. Cannon says jump, the people at SPI ask how far, and they sent me out to see if I could help.”

  “You went straight into the restroom?”

  “Absolutely. I’m not sure how he knew it, but that’s where Stuart said she was located—inside the restroom. She was actually in one of the stalls. Had to bust the door open to get at her.”

  “Stuart is where, exactly?” the cop asked.

  “Arizona, I believe.”

  “But he knew she was in the bar and in the restroom?” The cop’s disbelief was palpable.

  “That’s right.”

  “So when you found her on the floor, did she say anything to you about what happened?”

  “Just that someone named Corrine hated her and that it would never work. She said if she couldn’t marry . . . What’s his name again?”

  “Joel,” Marissa supplied. “Joel Williams.”

  “She said something to the effect that if she couldn’t marry Joel, what was the use? She could just as well be dead. If I hadn’t found her when I did, she would have been.”

  And should have been, Odin thought furiously. She damned well should have been!

  The people in the room were all preoccupied with what had just happened. The ones who weren’t talking to the cops were yammering away on their cell phones, letting the world know what was going on. For a long time, Odin sat quietly, thinking things over. Then, with everyone else speaking to their fellow humans, Odin spoke to Frigg.

  “Beth Wordon is a miss,” he reported, “all because of Stuart Ramey. As of now, he’s been upgraded to public enemy number one. I need to know everything there is to know about him and everything about High Noon’s physical headquarters in Cottonwood, Arizona. I want to see the as-built specs for the building as well as any permitted renovations. Text me Dr. Cannon’s Arizona address, and I need the location of the nearest Best Buy here in San Jose.”

  Twenty minutes later, once he had both, Odin donned the wide-brimmed Tilley hat that was part of his camping gear and entered the electronics store. Using the hat to avoid surveillance cameras as much as possible, he purchased a stand-alone GPS and several prepaid cell phones. Leaving the store, he used one of those to call Eddie Duarte and revise his own travel arrangements. Usually Odin would have had Frigg perform that chore, but given her current state of recalcitrance, he had no intention of cluing her in on his change of plans. After the fact, when it was time to make the overseas Bitcoin transfer, fine, but before the fact? No way.

  He didn’t think Frigg would come right out and openly defy a direct order, but then again, he didn’t want to take any chances.

  35

  An anxious Amelia stood beside Ali Reynolds in a room lined with computers and computer monitors at High Noon Enterprises, holding her breath and listening in as Stu directed Ajax toward Beth’s location. Finally Stu uttered the words she’d been hoping to hear. “Your guy’s got her,” he said.

  Weak with relief, Amelia staggered backward and sank onto a nearby chair.

  “The EMTs are on the scene and taking her to a hospital,” Stu continued. “Some cops just showed up and will be interviewing Ajax. I asked him to call us back when they’re finished. According to Ajax, there was a text message showing on Beth’s phone when he got to her, but by the time someone brought the phone out of the restroom, the message was gone. We need to know a whole lot more about it.”

  Amelia was far more interested in Beth’s condition than she was in the presence or absence of a message. “But how is Beth?” Amelia demanded impatiently. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Like I said, they’re transporting her to the hospital. St. Joseph’s in San Jose.”

  “I wish I could be there,” Amelia began. “If this really does have something to do with the data breach of my medical records, that means it’s all my fault.”

  “No,” Stu countered. “It’s someone else’s fault, and that disappearing message thing is very interesting.”

  “Why?” Ali asked.

  “I’ve heard of self-deleting texts before,” Stu said, “but I haven’t had any personal experience with them. That may not be what this is, either, but still . . .”

  An e-mail alert sounded, prompting Amelia to check her phone. As she read the message, her face brightened. “It’s one of my clients checking in. If you don’t mind, I’ll step outside and give her a call.”

  “Sure,” Ali said. “No problem.”

  Once Dr. Cannon left the room, Ali looked back at Stu, who was staring at his bank of computers.

  “What?” Ali asked.

  “The big question is whether Roger’s case and Beth’s are related. If they are, there’s a good chance Roger McGeary was also receiving self-deleting texts of some kind—something designed to pull the emotional rug out from under him. But the issue of self-deleting texts indicates a level of technological sophistication that’s . . . well . . .
surprising.”

  “What do you mean surprising?” Ali asked.

  “The whole realm of RAT technology is more NSA and spooks than it is Hackers Anonymous.”

  “What is RAT technology?” Ali asked.

  “Remote administration tool,” Stuart answered. “It’s software that allows someone other than the owner to access an electronic device, usually in a fashion that’s undetectable.”

  “Like a worm or something?”

  “Less detectable than a worm,” Stu answered. “Normal virus scans might not detect the presence of a RAT controller.”

  “You examined Roger’s phone and didn’t find anything,” Ali suggested.

  “Yes, but it didn’t occur to me that I should be looking for a RAT,” Stu replied. “Besides, there’s a good chance that the RAT was programmed to be self-deleting as well. The first thing we need to find is any unusual activity on either Roger’s devices or on Beth’s that would tell us something else was going on.”

  “And how do you plan on doing that?” Ali asked.

  Stu looked at his watch. It was after nine in Cottonwood. “First I’m going to take another look at Roger’s phone, and then I’m going to call Cami. It’s five a.m. in the UK, so it’s probably still too early to call her, but she may be our best bet for getting to the bottom of this.”

  Dr. Cannon returned to the room half an hour later looking enormously relieved. “That was one of my patients, Estelle. She says she’s fine. No out-of-line messages on any of her devices, but I told her if she starts receiving them, she needs to contact me immediately.”

  “Good,” Ali said.

  “Any word in the meantime?” Dr. Cannon asked.

  “Not yet,” Stu said. “Ali and I were just talking about the two cases—Roger’s and Beth’s—and wondering if they aren’t related. Other than you, what do the two of them have in common?”

  Dr. Cannon thought about that for a moment before she answered. “Suicide,” she said quietly. “That’s the one thing all my patients have in common. There’s a suicide connection in all of their families, and each of them has made at least one attempt to take his or her own life.”

  “So if someone is targeting individuals in a manner that would incite them to harm themselves,” Ali said, “would it be likely that the person behind all this might have some connection to suicide as well?”

  “That’s an interesting suggestion,” Dr. Cannon said. “It could be.”

  “What about this?” Ali mused, thinking aloud. “What if we’re dealing with someone who has come up with a way of committing murder by using a form of psychological warfare? Think about it. Supposing you’re a homicide cop dealing with a victim who may or may not have committed suicide. If you find out that person had previously attempted the same thing, maybe even multiple times, what do you think will happen?”

  “Write it off and close the case?” Stu asked.

  “Which is what it looks like Garza did with Roger’s,” Ali said.

  Just then Stu’s phone rang. “Okay, Ajax,” he said after answering. “Thanks for calling back. You’re on speaker with me, Dr. Cannon, and Ali Reynolds, one of the owners of High Noon Enterprises. What can you tell us about that text? Did you actually read it?”

  “I didn’t read all of it. The part I saw was the kind of ugly stuff junior high school-aged mean girls send out—something about Beth being a worthless slut who’d be better off dead. The message was signed by someone named Corrine. I understand Corrine is Beth’s fiancé’s ex-wife. The thing is, the fiancé himself showed up here a few minutes ago while the cops were still talking to me. They asked him about what was going on. He told them that earlier today, at lunch, Beth mentioned something about harassing texts coming in from his ex over the course of the past couple of weeks or so, but Joel claims he was giving Corrine a ride from the airport when this latest text came in. He says she never touched her phone while they were in the car and neither did the two boys. But if she didn’t send it, who did?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” Stuart said. “Most likely somebody who was spoofing the ex-wife.”

  “You’re saying the texts sent in Corrine’s name probably weren’t sent by her?” Ajax sounded puzzled.

  “That would be my guess,” Stu said. “But back to this particular text. What can you tell me about it?”

  “Not much. The phone was in Beth’s hand when I broke into the stall in the restroom. I got a look at it before she dropped it. Later on, one of Beth’s friends—a woman named Marissa—went into the bathroom to retrieve the phone. When she brought it out, there was no sign of the text—no trace that it had ever even been there in the first place, and Marissa swears she didn’t erase it.”

  “Where’s the phone now?”

  “I’m pretty sure the fiancé took it with him when he left for the hospital. Why?”

  “I wish I could lay hands on it,” Stu said. “You can’t just insert and delete texts into a phone at the drop of the hat, not without hacking into it first.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help you with any of that,” Ajax told him. “Is Dr. Cannon still there?”

  “I’m right here,” Amelia answered, speaking up.

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “Tell me about Beth,” Amelia said. “How is she?”

  “She’ll be all right, doc, but she cut herself pretty bad,” Ajax replied. “Believe me, you made the right call.”

  “I feel so responsible. I just wish I could see that for myself, but it’s a twelve-hour drive, minimum.”

  “I could look in on her if you’d like,” Ajax offered,

  “Thank you,” Amelia said. “I’d appreciate that, but please let SPI know that Beth may not be the only one in danger. Some of my other former patients may be targeted as well. I’ve tried to contact them, and I’m waiting to hear back.”

  “Call if you need us,” Ajax said. “We’ll be here.”

  Stu ended the call. “Good people,” he said quietly, “Ajax and all the rest.”

  “Yes,” Amelia agreed with a nod. “Very good people, and so are you. I don’t know how you did what you did, but I really appreciate it.”

  But Stuart, already lost in thought, gave no indication that he even heard her compliment. He had turned away from her and was scrutinizing his array of computer monitors with unblinking concentration.

  “Come on, Dr. Cannon,” Ali said, accepting his abrupt dismissal with good grace. “Let’s leave Stuart alone now. He needs to work.”

  Ali escorted Amelia through the building and out into the parking lot. After using a key fob to open the door on a bright blue Chrysler, Amelia turned back to Ali. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

  “You’re very welcome,” Ali said. “We’re always glad to be of service.”

  36

  Stuart was beyond relieved when Ali took Dr. Cannon in hand and bodily led her from the room, leaving him in relative peace with only his bank of computer screens for company.

  Stu was a solitary kind of guy, and the preceding hours of intense interactions with people he didn’t know had left him drained if not paralyzed. Had it not been for the previous several months during which he had learned to tolerate Cami Lee’s disruptive presence in his life, he might not have been able to cope. Instead, he had helped save Beth Wordon’s life because Cami Lee—with her endlessly annoying barrage of constant chatter—had helped save him. Even a few months earlier, the synergy he’d had with Ajax Porter would have been impossible.

  Good for me, Stuart told himself. And good for Cami Lee.

  He didn’t sit around wasting any more time in self-congratulation. Instead, he went back to the welcome familiarity of the geek world, where there was little need for emotional overload. His first call was to Walt Cooper, one of Stuart’s vast network of mostly nameless and faceless electronics wizards.
Walt also happened to be the engineer inside Beth Wordon’s cell service provider who had enabled Stuart to track down her phone.

  “How is she?” Walt asked when he heard Stuart’s voice on the phone.

  “She should make it,” Stuart told him. “Might not have if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “Glad I could help out.”

  “But there’s something else you can help me with.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What kind of billing program is that phone on? Can you check that for me, or will I need to go through channels on that?”

  Walter laughed. “What do you think? It’s not one of my usual screens, but where my friends are concerned, I pride myself on being a full-service kind of guy. Hang on.”

  Stuart stayed on hold for the better part of ten minutes before Walt came back on the line. “That’s pretty interesting,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Beth Wordon’s phone was on an unlimited data program, so she wouldn’t have noticed any change in her charges, but as of a month ago, her usage went way up. It didn’t just double—it tripled. It’s as though she was on her phone twenty-four hours a day for the better part of a month.”

  “I have no doubt someone was on her phone, but it probably wasn’t her,” Stuart said. “Can you see what’s happening on that phone right now?”

  “Nothing,” Walt said. “Not a damned thing. It was running full blast and using data like crazy earlier in the day. That was one of the things that made it so easy to trace. Then, a while ago, the usage dropped and a little later the phone went dead quiet—like somebody pulled the plug.”

  Somebody did pull the plug, Stuart thought. “Can you tell me exactly what time the data usage went down?”

  “Yes, that happened at 8:42 p.m. California time, so an hour later for you.”

  “No,” Stuart corrected. “It’s summer so Arizona is on Pacific time as well. Thanks so much for your help, Walt. You really did save a young woman’s life today, and maybe helped bag a killer as well.”

  “No shit?” Walt sounded surprised. Like Stu, he wasn’t accustomed to being labeled a hero.