by Betty Webb
A koala.
“Eeeeeeep!!!” Wanchu screeched. “Eeeeeeep!!!”
As furious as she was terrified, she wrapped herself around Bronson’s shin, dug in her claws, and began biting. His screams blended with hers. Tossing the cell phone aside, I dashed forward and snatched up Bronson’s fallen handgun. I don’t know anything about guns, only that this one was big and ugly.
“For God’s sake, Teddy, shoot!” Bronson yelled.
“You or the koala?” Wanchu was dug in deep and going in deeper with her sharp teeth. Bronson’s frantic efforts to pull her away just made her bite harder.
Figuring that the zoo’s emergency mantra “humans first, animals second” didn’t apply in attempted murder situations, I answered, “Sorry, Bronson. I might—just might—shoot if I thought she could kill you, but so far, you’re looking good, give or take some blood spatter here and there. Too bad about the suit, but you’ll soon get fitted with a new one. Prison stripes. Très chic.”
While Bronson rolled around on the forest floor with Wanchu firmly adhered to his shin, I picked up the cell phone again. “Ralph, did you get all that?”
“On the speaker phone, no less, with four other deputies listening in. Keep that gun on him, girl. Help’s on its way.”
Watching as the koala munched on Bronson’s leg, I smiled.
“Tell them to take their time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Now that I was no longer running for my life, and Bronson lay handcuffed to a stretcher while having his leg attended to, I’d begun to feel chilly, so it was nice to have a warm koala wrapped around my neck while giving my statement at the San Sebastian Sheriff’s office.
“We need to turn that koala over to Animal Control,” Joe said, frowning. “She attacked someone.”
I shook my head. “Wanchu’s had all her shots. If you don’t believe me, they’re on file at the zoo. As for that so-called ‘attack,’ that only happened after Bronson stepped on her, so it was self-defense. Plus, I want our vet to look at her foot and make sure nothing’s broken.”
Before Joe could protest, I hauled out my phone again and called Zorah’s cell, catching her not long after she’d arrived home from the marathon. After I’d explained where I was and why, she volunteered to pick Wanchu up and return her to the zoo. That accomplished, I called Helen.
Fifteen minutes later, Helen—who lived nearby—was sitting across from Joe, explaining the import of Tyler Everts’ old printouts in language that even the computer-challenged could understand. She’d brought along two of Tyler’s computers and all of his discs and printouts to give to Sergeant Kevin Turow, the department’s computer crimes specialist.
Turow didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a computer geek. Around six-foot-six, he had massive shoulders and hands, but as he walked, he leaned to the side like a boxer who had taken one too many hits. Maybe he had. Joe once told me that before Turow went back to school to obtain a degree in computer science, he’d been a beat cop in San Francisco’s rough Tenderloin District.
The big man rubbed his meaty hands in anticipation. He sat down at the ancient IBM-compatible, inserted a floppy disc, and scrolled through the files. Seconds later, he gave a happy little yip. “MS-DOS 3.1! Speak to me, you sexy little bitch.”
“Keep it clean, Kev,” Joe warned. “And in English.”
“Sorry, Sheriff. Well, Helen’s right. The shi…uh, the you-know-what’s gonna hit the fan over at SoftSol if they wind up losing the rights to PCIFS.”
Joe cut in. “Like I said, Kev. Keep it clean and in English. What’s PCIFS?”
Turow grabbed a printout and flapped it at Joe. “You’re looking at it. Personal Computer InterFile Search. Hit a couple of simple commands on any keyboard and within seconds, your computer finds whatever phrase or number series you’re looking for, no matter how many files you have cluttering up your hard drive, or whatever mislabeled folder the little bas…oops, the little dears are hiding in.”
“Which means?” Joe looked puzzled.
“It means money, Sheriff, lots of it.” After emitting a high-pitched cackle that sounded startling coming from a man of such size, he sobered up. “At the time this here Everts guy wrote this program, he obviously didn’t think it was worth all that much. And why would he? In 1985, the few PCs out there weren’t as crowded with files as they eventually became. But flash forward ten years later, when everybody and his dog were using PCs and files were breeding like maggots on hot sh…, uh, hot stuff, data started getting lost. Congressmen lost the love letters they were typing to their mistresses, their wives lost the list of assets they’d compiled for their divorce attorneys…Don’t you see? Any program that would help users locate lost data more quickly would make the designer some serious money.”
At the mention of money, Joe’s eyes lost their glazed look. “How much?”
Turow cackled again. “Millions, at the very least. Seriously, have you ever tried to find wordage you used once but can’t remember which file you put it in? And you’ve got more than five hundred files on your PC? Well, before Ford Bronson copyrighted what he claimed was his PCIFS, that kind of computer search could take hours. Even if you had the patience to wait that long, the search might result in some indecipherable coding—to you, anyway—not the actual wordage itself.”
“I still don’t understand.”
Turow shook his head in exasperation. “This guy here…” He placed a meaty forefinger on the computer screen. “This Tyler Everts, he designed the PCIFS. In 1985.”
“Which means?”
Turow’s mouth fell open so far I could see the gold inlay on one of his molars. “Sheriff, haven’t you ever read the program copyright notification on your computer?”
Joe looked at Turow like he was crazy. “Of course I haven’t. No one does.”
Turow gave another headshake at the willful ignorance of the average computer user. “According to the time/date stamp here, Everts designed the PCIFS three years before Bronson copyrighted the exact same program in 1988. Bronson used it to give SoftSol its start, and as anybody who hasn’t been hiding under a rock for the past couple of decades knows, this here PCIFS was the springboard that built SoftSol into a billion-dollar business. Just as Windows did for Bill Gates.”
An awed silence descended on the room for a moment, then Joe turned to me and asked, “What makes you think Bronson didn’t buy the PCIFS program from Everts?”
That’s when I told Joe about the two letters I’d found in the Oakland storage unit, which I’d left at Caro’s. “One is a dot-matrix copy of a letter Kate’s father wrote to Bronson in 1988, when he discovered his program had been stolen. The other is Bronson’s hand-written answer. I guess he wasn’t much into formality back then. He asked Tyler if he knew how much it would cost to prove his claim and did he have the money to sustain that kind of legal fight. I didn’t find any more correspondence on the subject. From all accounts, Kate’s father was a bit of a hippie, so it looks like he walked away from the whole thing.”
Turow jumped in. “At the time, there were a lot of guys like that, geniuses who got ripped off because they never realized the financial impact of their software. They were operating under the ‘open sourcing’ theory, that knowledge wanted to be shared, that it was wrong to charge for it, hippie shi…uh, hippie stuff like that.”
“Sounds like you’re telling me there was no actual piracy, then,” Joe said, frowning. “If Tyler Everts walked away from the whole thing, what was the problem?”
Time for me to speak up again. “Bronson is California’s version of royalty. Not only does he golf with the President, but he hobnobs with people like Oprah and Madonna. He revels in that kind of reflected glory. But fame can come back to haunt you if you’re keeping a secret, and he was keeping a big one. Just before Kate was killed, he testified on Capitol Hill about the evils of computer piracy and intellectual property theft. He knew there’d be a media feeding frenzy if she unmasked him as the same kind of thief he wa
s testifying against.”
Joe still looked baffled. “How did Kate make the connection between Bronson and her father? She didn’t seem to be very interested in current events, because when we searched her boat, we found no television set, no newspapers, and no magazines—unless you want to count a couple dozen issues of Animal Keepers’ Forum.”
“There’s a TV in the zoo’s employee lounge. Maybe she saw part of the congressional hearings on her lunch break, and with the repeated exposure, who knows? And don’t forget, Kate was at his television station every Tuesday for two months. Bronson himself told me that he met her there in the hallway and that they’d chatted.”
“I don’t know, Teddy…” he began.
No one can be denser than a smart man. “Kate would have been around five when her father designed the PCIFS. Louise Signorelli, the woman who had a thing for Tyler, told me Kate used to go with him to the workshop. She also said that Tyler mentioned some teenager who used to do odd jobs for him. Bronson himself, when he thought he’d got me cornered back there in the woods, told me the workshop was in his parents’ garage. When you check the property records, I’ve no doubt you’ll find their names.
Joe frowned. “If Kate was only five how could she remember…”
I told him about the photograph I’d found in the storage unit, which I’d left in my room with the letters. “When you run it through an age-progression program, you’ll see how it could have jogged her memory.”
Satisfied that he had finally seen the light, I continued. “When Kate was clearing out her father’s things before moving them into the storage unit, she found everything. Maybe she’d been just a child when he wrote the PCIFS, but being computer-savvy herself, she would have seen the dates and notes on the printouts. She’d have understood that her father should have been able to afford the best residential medical facility money could buy. Instead, he was moldering away in an overcrowded nursing home. Maybe Kate found all this material before the congressional hearings, maybe after. Who knows? But once she did, it must have felt to her like a needle being jammed into an open wound. In her Tasmanian Devil blog—the unofficial, non-zoo one—she said something about ‘familiar faces in new places.’”
Helen, who up to that point had been silent, said, “Poor Kate. When she contacted Bronson, she signed her own death warrant, didn’t she?”
“Heck’s, too,” I pointed out. And almost mine. “Not only was Bronson’s yacht berthed at Gunn Landing Harbor, but he jogs there every evening. He must have seen the Nomad. How could anyone not notice such a gaudy boat? I’m betting he saw Kate and Heck palling around together and began to worry about how much Kate was telling him. Right after Kate’s murder, the harbor was on alert and people were watching out for anything unusual, so Bronson must have been worried about making a move then, but as soon as things began to calm down, he killed Heck. Just in case. He even bragged about it.”
“Collateral damage,” Joe said.
I nodded. “Later, when Bronson was at Caro’s party, he heard Zorah say I’d driven up to Oakland to see Tyler. That probably unnerved him, because he had no way of knowing how much Tyler could remember. When Zorah added that I’d left the nursing home with some papers, he must have panicked, thinking she meant these…” I gestured at the printouts. “But he was wrong. All I’d found by that point were receipts from the funeral home. A couple of days later, Bronson tried to shoot me. I guess he figured he wouldn’t be able to get close enough to me to use a garrote, like he’d done on Kate and Heck.”
At the mention of Caro’s name, Joe’s jaw clenched. Through gritted teeth, he said, “One thing still puzzles me. That garrote business. How could a software engineer even know what a garrote was?”
Helen smiled. “There speaks a charter member of Luddites Anonymous. Sheriff, SoftSol has an entire game division. One of my favorites is their X-Andra, Temptress Assassin. Her favorite method of dispatch is the garrote. All Bronson had to do was learn from his own game.”
Joe’s face hardened again. “Influenced by a computer game? Here comes an insanity defense. But I think we’re all right there. Too much planning went into both murders to pull that off.”
***
As it turned out, Bronson, in his arrogance, hadn’t planned well enough.
Although an entire fleet of high-priced attorneys argued that my phone call from the eucalyptus forest to the sheriff’s office was inadmissible, the judge let it stand. But even if it had been tossed, enough evidence remained to obtain a conviction. The bullet from my poor old Nissan’s headrest—as well as the bullet found lodged in a blue gum eucalyptus fronting Bentley Road—proved to have been fired from Bronson’s gun. Gunshot residue sprinkled his Mercedes’ steering wheel and the edge of his driver’s side window, as well as his hand. The zoo van’s paint was found on the Mercedes’ bumper…
The evidence was overwhelming.
But I didn’t find all that out for another couple of weeks. In the meantime, something extraordinary happened a few days after Bronson’s arrest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jacqueline’s Bistro wasn’t all that busy when Joe and I arrived for brunch the following Sunday, so we were able to grab a table on the shaded patio. A hundred yards to the south began the steep climb up San Sebastian Hill, where the old Spanish mission overlooked the town.
“I’m thinking the ham and avocado quiche, how about you?” Joe asked.
Uniforms happen to turn me on, but I had to admit that he looked devastatingly handsome in his civvies. Not unaware of his effect on me, he had accented his half-Hispanic, half-Irish genetic mix with Gap khakis, an azure shirt the same color as his eyes, and an off-white linen sports coat that covered his shoulder holster. Just looking at that delicious, dangerous man made me want to drag him back to the Merilee for another round of…
“Teddy, aren’t you going to order?”
Startled out of my X-rated fantasy, I said, “Uh, yeah, ham and avocado, oh my God, yes.”
He grinned. “You are so transparent.”
My face flamed.
“Don’t be embarrassed, Teddy. It’s one of the reasons I love you. You might fib from time to time, but given your open face, you can never truly lie. By the way, you’re looking especially pretty today, face scrapes, bruises, and all.”
And he says I fib. But I’ll admit that the fog-colored Vera Wang pants suit Caro bought me several seasons back did tone down my garish freckles and hair. “You wanted me to dress up, so I did.”
“I love an obedient woman.” Only his chuckle saved him from being clouted. Wisely, he changed the subject. “How’s that feisty koala doing? Settled down yet after her big adventure?”
“Enough so that I caught her in a compromising position yesterday with Nyee, her mate. The zoo might celebrate a blessed event in about a month. Not that we’ll see the pup that soon. It’ll stay in her pouch for six more months.”
Joe asked the waiter for champagne, and soon we were toasting the zoo’s good fortune. After drinking the bubbly, he said, “And your mother. How did she feel when you moved back to the Merilee?”
“Oh, you know Caro. She had a fit.” To dig him a little, I added, “But she’s already planning another Let’s-Find-Teddy-a-Suitable-Husband party.”
A baleful look from Joe. “You’d think that after she tried to fix you up with a killer she’d have learned better.”
“Caro never learns. She’s still madly in love with my father, wherever he is.”
He raised his champagne glass again. “To your fugitive father. May he remain forever free.”
I grinned. “That’s a lawless thing for a sheriff to say.”
By the time the waiter brought our quiche, we’d moved our chairs close enough that our legs touched from ankle to thigh. The fact that Joe and I were able to spend only one full day together per week made the day even more piquant.
“Let’s walk up to the Mission,” he said, once we’d finished eating and he’d paid the check.
“The Sheriff’s are.”
Hand in hand, we strolled up the hill.
The day was balmy, with a soft breeze whispering in from the Pacific. The air was alive with birdsong. Two swallows dove toward the Mission’s bell tower, while ahead of us several Indian blue peacocks paraded up the path that led to the chapel, the sun glinting off the lone male’s gaudy tail.
“Do peacocks mate for life?” Joe asked.
“Indian blues are polygamous. Not being a birder myself, I don’t know much about the other peacocks, but I expect they’re the same.”
“Hmm.”
He seemed disappointed, so I said, “Emperor penguins mate for life.”
“I like penguins.”
“So do I.”
“We need to get married.”
I stopped in the middle of the path. “Huh?”
“I’m more penguin than peacock, Teddy. So are you.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“There’s a statue of him further on up the hill if you want to stop by and say hello, but why don’t we head for that bench first, since I think you’re about to faint.”
“Don’t be silly, I’m…” I’m going to fall kersplat on my face.
He kept that from happening by slipping a steadying arm around my waist. “Hey, hey! We don’t have to get married right away, and considering your reaction, an engagement of several months might be a good idea. Then once you’re ready, we’ll sneak out of town before your mother catches us. We’ll drive to Vegas…”
“I’m not getting married by some guy dressed like Elvis!”
He smiled down at me. “Would that be a conditional yes?”
“No to Elvis,” I blubbered, “But yesyesyes to you!”
With that, I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him wildly. He returned in kind. From the gasps around us, I deduced that we had shocked the tourists.