Deadly Pasts (Agent Nora Wexler Mysteries)

by CR Wiley

  It became clear that he wasn’t about to give away his location until he had a sure shot. Nora returned behind the shelves and silently crept along toward the opposite wall. She imagined possible diversions she could create to get him to fire first. Being sneaky enough to come up behind him was more than she could hope for. At the bottom of it, Nora felt alone and scared.

  The banging on the hatch increased, making it tougher to hear anything in the basement. It had to be putting pressure on Gupta to make a move too. When she reached the end of the row she decided to do something to draw him out. Taking the pistols from her side, she threw one diagonally across the room in the direction where the light had been.

  Gunfire flickered around the room, but not toward the area where she’d thrown the gun. He’d immediately known it was a distraction and was firing farther to the left toward the locked door from the opposite corner.

  Nora knew it was now or never. Gritting her teeth, she came around from behind the shelving with a pistol in each hand, firing repeatedly at the source of the flashes and rushing in at them. He stopped shooting and ran left, probably looking for an opportunity to get some cover and return fire.

  After firing half a dozen shots, she stopped briefly and darted to the side. Knowing her chance of getting to him was slipping away, Nora ran headlong toward the other side of the room and collided with the tall shelves. It may have been dumb luck, but she had just enough impact to make the shelving tip over onto its side, leading to a loud crash and boxes tumbling everywhere. Nora fell between the shelves against the floor, ducking as she heard more shots.

  Raising one arm above the edge of the steel keeping her safe, she fired blindly in a last ditch effort to hold him off. A click caught her attention; Gupta’s weapon was empty. She had about five or six shots left, and one of them had to count.

  The sound of her nemesis tripping and falling over the boxes provided a lucky break. He must’ve been coming at her. She pulled herself up and staggered toward the source of the cacophony. All she needed was a firm fix on where he was in the dark.

  Something hit the side of her arm with the gun, a punch or a lucky flail from Gupta, who suddenly had his hand over hers and was pointing the weapon away and forcing her to empty the clip. While shot after shot fired, she attempted to shoulder him away, all the while groping for his other hand in case it held another firearm.

  A click from the empty gun was all he needed to pull away. Her other gun left her hand and vanished into the darkness. Any second she expected to hear another shot, one that would go straight through her. Before he could draw another weapon, Nora clubbed him somewhere around the head or neck with hers. The pair of them tumbled back, tripping over boxes.

  He had both hands around her throat. Nora fought back, slamming him in the side with the butt of the pistol, but she hit something hard and he didn’t seem to feel it.

  “You’re dying, and the exultation is one I will cherish forever,” he said.

  Nora coughed and sputtered. He was so close to her, too close to fight off with her weakening fists. The darkness was closing in.

  Nora accepted that she was dead. Her free hands pressed against the armored padding covering Gupta’s middle. He couldn’t feel her touching him or rummaging through his jacket for another pistol tucked inside.

  It felt like someone else was slipping the gun from its hold and pulling the trigger. One shot, then another, directly into the professor’s middle. He made a choking sound. Something had gotten through, but Nora kept firing to be sure. He fell back and she fell with him. When they landed, his blood moistened her wrists and forearms.

  He was gasping now, gurgling, clinging desperately to life. His hands loosened around Nora’s neck and allowed her to take a painful breath.

  “Three dozen dogs will chase you through eternity,” she said.

  The police were shining a light against the hatch, which was being ripped open. Thin beams from their lights filtered through to Gupta’s face, giving Nora a glimpse of his final expression. It wasn’t contrite or sorrowful, as she expected. He fought to kill her right through to his last breath. When that was gone and he remained perfectly still, Nora still felt wary of his presence. Despite the pool of blood or his glossy, unfocused eyes, she continued to hold the gun against him until the hatch opened and Detective Wyeth came down to her.

  CHAPTER 27

  ALLEY NEAR DELWARE AND MILIVIA STREET

  BERKELEY, CA

  The flashing police lights, the blanket over her shoulders, the things people said to her that never really made it into her ringing ears, none of it seemed real until she was escorted back through the alley to find Caroline propped against an ambulance.

  Nora’s friend had been bawling, of course, but when they locked eyes her expression changed to something brighter. She grew ecstatic and on the verge of laughing. Feeling her arms wrapped tight in a hug was enough to patch a heart torn by so many atrocities.

  “What can’t you do, Nora?” Caroline asked in astonishment. For her part, Nora was so exhausted she could barely conjure a faint smile. An endless stream of answers sprung into her mind. She couldn’t bring Maria back or save Stephanie before it was too late. There was so much she needed to have discovered faster but didn’t.

  “I can’t be worthy of your incredible friendship,” Nora said, closing her eyes and slipping deeper into the embrace.

  “So, Stephanie then?” Caroline said. Together they looked at the body sprawled out on the side of the alley. A few men were attending to it, preparing it for removal.

  “She got caught up with someone she thought could help her, but the whole scheme was too crazy even for her. I almost think he shot her on purpose to send more of his secrets to the grave.”

  Caroline sighed.

  “I know I should feel burned from all of the lies, but I really only feel sad. No matter the circumstances, the end result is that I lost another friend. There must’ve been something more I could’ve done,” Caroline said.

  Nora shook her head.

  “Nobody could’ve been more caring and thoughtful than you. Putting us up while we were here was just the beginning. Taking advantage of your kindness might be the worst injustice of all.”

  “Maybe, but it won’t hurt if I never come back to this alley again.”

  Nora recognized a few people farther back near the mouth of the alley, Lauren, her parents, and even Chip. When she noticed them, they took it as an opportunity to come over. Although seeing that Brent and Linda came was a surprise, Nora could hardly guess what made Chip rush out of bed for this or who even called him.

  “It’s sweet of you to come, Chip, but I don’t think I’ll be needing a Victim Advocate for this.”

  Caroline bit her lip and put a hand on Chip’s broad shoulder.

  “Actually, we were up together when I got the call. The break in was really the last straw for Grady, and now with everything tonight I’m completely sure he’ll be moved out by tomorrow. Definitely don’t feel sorry for me about it. I have a feeling I’ll be way better off,” she said, leaning against Chip. The two of them looked so cute together.

  “Maybe in the end you’ll really have gained something,” Nora said.

  “I hope so.”

  They spent a few more minutes talking until they were interrupted by Detective Wyeth, who tapped Nora on the shoulder and forced her to turn around.

  “Nora Wexler, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Professor Vijay Gupta,” she said, eliciting gasps.

  “What?” Nora asked, her jaw dropping. Wyeth cracked a smile.

  “OK, maybe not, but you’re lucky that old Mrs. Shanahan on the third floor here was up and saw everything. Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what happened?”

  Wyeth had a notepad out, ready to scribble, but flashing lights made it hard for Nora to think.

  “Which part? How Stephanie killed Maria on behalf of the professor after she found out about their affair and fraud? How Gupta lured Stephanie
closer with promises of celebrity status in the science world? You already know about what he did to those dogs. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of his academic papers had fudged data,” Nora said. She worried she’d been rambling, but Wyeth had a reassuring nature about her that proved soothing.

  “Why don’t we start with tonight? There’s a gunshot victim here but no murder weapon.”

  Nora nodded. Somehow everything that happened seemed so long ago, but her tale wasn’t going to begin with her visit to the TKE house.

  “I got a frantic text from Stephanie, who’d gone up to Mungoes so she could contact me under the pretense that she’d done something stupid at the bar and gotten sick. Of course I thought it had something to do with the baby, so I rushed over. She told me to pull over here so she could throw up, and that’s when Gupta ambushed me.

  “She admitted to bludgeoning Maria with the crow bar—check her fingerprints. And Gupta said he’d called Maria into the area with a text ostensibly from campus officials. Stephanie held me by the neck while Gupta lined up a shot, but a flower pot fell from above, and he ended up shooting Stephanie.

  “After a brief fight he ran into the alley, and since the police weren’t here yet I had to go after him myself. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t let them get away again. The thought of another friend dead in this alley and her killer slipping away too would’ve crushed me. I couldn’t take it.”

  The emotions suddenly became overwhelming. Nora’s eyes were flooding even as she tried to sustain her composure. Caroline comforted her with an arm over the shoulder.

  “I think that’s a good start and will probably do for now. We’ve got a lot to look over here before the night is through. Considering what happened to us in that bunker, Gupta’s intent to kill and the necessity of self-defense are beyond question.”

  Nora nodded, taking deep breaths that still carried slashes of pain. She probably still had blood on her face, but at the moment she didn’t care.

  “There’s one more thing,” Nora said to the detective who appeared ready to move along. “I’m supposed to fly back east today. Is that going to be possible?”

  Wyeth appraised her for a moment. Now she was the only thing standing in the way of finally being back with Travis.

  “As long as I can call you, it’s fine with me. Nobody knows this case better than you do. I hope you’ll help me wade through the aftermath. Go get some sleep and have a safe flight. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Take care of Berkeley for me,” Nora said. “No offense to the other guys on the force here, but if I’d been in touch with you from the beginning we might’ve been in a much better spot than we are now.”

  Wyeth waved them off, and the group left the alley for the street. It seemed strange to do something normal like driving a car, as if the whole thing had been a simple errand, but soon enough they were back at Caroline’s. Grady was gone and soon the rest of his things would vanish as well. Nora still dreaded the idea of looking into a mirror, opting instead to stay up for a while with Caroline and Lauren in the kitchen drinking tea.

  Nora caught Caroline grinning at her.

  “Maria can rest easier now. It turned out the only thing it took to solve her case was someone who cared deeply for her.”

  Nora shook her head. “If that was the case you would’ve solved it long ago.”

  “But it really did all come to a close. You got the resolution you were seeking,” Lauren said.

  “I paid for it,” Nora said. She loved these brown-haired Devonshire girls and hoped the touch of naiveté they carried would never go away.

  “I hope I get that kind of resolution,” Lauren said, looking into her tea. Nora reached out and took her hand.

  “You paid up front. I have a feeling you’re in for a lucky break.”

  CHAPTER 28

  2049 SAN PABLO AVENUE

  BERKELEY, CA

  It was 12:05 p.m. Danny Paulk had his laptop on his knees as he sat on the toilet, the shower running nearby. The acquaintance he’d been staying with, Jeremy, had put him under a strict “No Internet” rule after getting suspicious about his situation, requiring Danny to hack the network password from a nearby coffee shop. Now he held the napkin with the authorization code, logging onto the very server he’d been falsely accused of breaking into.

  He felt strangely optimistic, like it was the natural order of things for his time as a fugitive to come to a close. He already had a rough idea of what he was looking for relating to the faked OpenSwordsed digital signature. The first crack had been identifying some of the leaks that made it into the newspaper, which served as a lead on the files he needed to trace. As long as Travis properly distracted the system’s monitors by fumbling around while Danny hunted through logs for call notifications of the transfers in the instance history, he should be safe.

  The system was a minefield, manageable but requiring a lot of attention. Going in alone, even with the help of the Heartbleed bug, would’ve been unnecessarily risky. When he started poking through files relating to secret operations and undercover agents, his mind started to run with the possibilities of what he might come across. Did aliens exist? Who really killed JFK? Was 9/11 a conspiracy?

  The lesson giving him cover to roam wouldn’t last forever. The sooner he could find what he needed and get out, the better. Certainly the FBI’s own hackers had crawled through every inch of the records and had come to the exact same conclusion that he did after scanning: there was no external breach.

  Danny double and triple checked the history, pouring through thousands of lines of records and looking for any kind of anomaly. He went so far back that he found something even more disturbing. The FBI had been aware of the Heartbleed bug and had fixed it on its servers months before the alleged breach had occurred.

  “What the f…” Danny trailed off.

  “You’re using all the hot water!” Jeremy called from outside the bathroom.

  “I’m trying to rub one out!” Danny called.

  “Dude, that’s my shower!”

  Returning to the screen, his mind raced to follow the logical progression of his discovery. There was no breach, yet leaked documents were ending up in the hands of journalists. That meant someone inside the FBI was secretly disseminating documents that were undermining its credibility. Was it one of their programmers? No, no lone wolf could do that without getting caught. Whoever was overseeing the system had to be in on it, and they were taking orders from farther up the chain. But how could Danny tell who was calling the shots?

  Danny switched onto a completely different track, gathering info about the programmers who’d logged on during the timeframe of the incident and were still given regular supervisory duty. There were three or four usernames that kept coming up, and with a little more legwork Danny was able to translate those into real names using some of the employee dossiers.

  The group seemed to mostly manage themselves, which wasn’t exactly unusual for programmers, but Danny kept digging for a common thread that tied them together. When he opened up the hiring records for these men, the answer was staring him right in the face. Lores Meron, the guy Nora had been so worried about running across back in Seattle, had his hands all over the applications for these programmers. Danny found personalized recommendations, transcripts of interviews he’d conducted himself—full of leading questions and coached answers—and his signature appearing on the contracts.

  Once Danny made the connection, tracing the information they fed Meron through the files they accessed was a piece of cake. It was all right there and the group was so brazen they didn’t even try to hide it. Emails back and forth were still on the server for anyone who knew where to look. Danny read through everything, right down to the message Meron sent to the FBI’s leadership, announcing the imaginary breach. The only thing he didn’t know was why Meron would do this.

  Nearly hyperventilating as he imagined the prospect of exposing an FBI conspiracy, Danny raced to download the emails. Even if he persuasively expla
ined everything in the minutest detail and turned Meron’s own words against him, it would take the journalists time to research and conduct Freedom of Information Act requests to blow the lid off this, and Danny guessed Meron wouldn’t go quietly.

  But first he had to tell Nora.

  Without having a way to securely contact Travis Greer, Nora was the only one he could contact immediately. Yanking his phone out of his pocket, he sent a quick text with the intention to follow up with more details later.

  “Meron did it. Programmers are in on it. No external breach. Heartbleed fixed 5/14.”

  The timestamp on the Heartbleed fix was ironclad proof that the entire thing was an inside job, one that Nora couldn’t have possibly aided him in without the kind of special authorization code Travis managed to get.

  Now he was ready to organize this data and get it into the hands of as many journalists as he could, but a knock at the door disturbed him.

  “Jeremy, just give me a minute!” Danny called, shaking his head. The water bill for this was going to be huge, but it’d be worth it.

  It barely entered into Danny’s mind that the sound wasn’t a knock on the door but something breaking through the front door to the apartment. Suddenly the lights went off, casting the room in darkness except for the laptop’s glowing screen. The internet went down with the rest of the electricity.

  A nervous shiver shot through Danny’s spine. They’d found him, and this time he wouldn’t be able to get away. His flash drives were back in his room, and the phone he managed to get while on the run wasn’t capable of creating a mobile hotspot. The bathroom window was on the second floor and had a bolted in screen.

  Danny closed the laptop, got up, and exited the bathroom to find an eerie stillness in the apartment. He wondered where Jeremy had gone when he heard faint sniffling from the living room.