Devil's Pasture

by Richard Bannister

  "I have a good feeling about your mother this morning. Everybody's here. Come through."

  My mother was seated at a dining table with her attorney, Gene Decker and a mousy woman who Fisher introduced as Belinda Moon, the notary.

  My Mom's face was as expressionless as usual, but she was talking to Mr. Decker about the time I'd fallen off my bicycle as a child and needed stitches. When she saw me, she said:

  "How are you today, my dear?"

  "Hello, Mom. You know who I am?" I asked in astonishment.

  "Of course, I do. You're my daughter, Megan. Why wouldn't I?"

  The signing went off without a hitch.

  Progress, finally.

  After everyone had gone, I spent time with my Mom looking at a family photo album I'd brought with me. It was wonderful to laugh and joke with her about the happy times, before my family's world turned upside down. She even put a bony arm around me and gave me a hug—something she didn't often do when I was little.

  I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth about Dad.

  Perhaps she left him because she found out about him molesting Beth. Though if that's true, I must question why she left me with him. I was the same age as Beth, and just as vulnerable.

  In the end, I preferred never to know.

  CHAPTER 46

  AT MIDDAY, I WAS HOLED UP in my car with Prentiss, outside Patrick Whitehead's house. He had condescended to join me in Mark Davies' ancient Jeep Cherokee 4x4, but he was surveying the shabby interior with a look of suspicion. Or maybe his expression was in response to what he was hearing on the recording of Kayla Ellis implicating Brickman in Matt Baker's death.

  Prentiss waited for a beat after the audio finished before insisting, "She's going to have to come in for a formal interview."

  "You'll need to use your charms—she's suspicious of cops," I warned.

  "Townsend will come after you if he finds you're still working."

  "I've just made major inroads into your cases, and all you're worried about is what lieutenant dick-head will think?"

  "You'll worry about it when he fires you."

  "That won't happen if I solve the three murders and prove him wrong."

  "You think he'll ever admit to making a mistake? And now you're poking around in Jack Bennett's death—one of his old cases—implying he screwed up."

  "No, not a screwup. Try fixing a case for whoever killed Bennett. I will have him for that—you wait and see."

  A concrete truck thundered by, drowning out Prentiss' retort.

  "We need to speak with Whitehead about another matter," I told him.

  "Now what?" Prentiss's voice had the irritated tone some men reserve for women they think are slow or stupid.

  "Ashley Logan had a restraining order against him after he stalked her and assaulted her. Possibly raped her. He needs to provide an alibi for Ashley and Beth's murders."

  "Let's see what he says about the hacking first. He may clam up when we ask what he was doing on the morning of the murders."

  Whitehead's single-story residence stood apart from its neighbors as if it had been built in the middle of two lots. Trees and mature shrubs almost hid it from the road, but I could see the lights were on. When I'd called ahead to make sure he'd be there, he invited me over with unusual affability. I'd heard about his frenzy at Core Fitness. As we climbed the steps to the front door, I wondered which persona we'd meet.

  "Can you check CCTV to see if you can place Brickman near here on the night of the break-in," I asked.

  "I will, but I could lose my job, for involving you in this." Prentiss pushed the doorbell.

  Despite my phone call, and it being the middle of the day, Whitehead opened the door wearing a blue and white striped toweling bathrobe. He ushered us into the living room, his eyes leveled at my chest. We sat on a sofa opposite a giant television atop a low table. A similarly attired woman, pretty, early twenties, with shoulder-length black hair, lay in a La-Z-Boy thumbing the screen of a phone. She seemed to attract plenty of Prentiss' attention.

  "What can I do for you?" Whitehead sat in a recliner. On a coffee table beside him, was a collection of empty wine glasses and bottles. Discarded chip bags and food wrappers littered the floor.

  We want to speak to you alone," Prentiss said.

  "You can say anything in front of Tracy. I have no secrets from her." Whitehead tried to drain an empty wine glass. Finding the nearest bottle also empty he left the room and returned a couple of moments later with a fresh one. He twisted off the top, filled his glass, and said, "Can I offer you some wine?"

  We both declined, and I said, "We have a witness statement saying someone hacked into Abbey Mount Hospital while you were working there. Hospital management denies it ever happened. The witness quoted you as saying the hack involved patient records and was perpetrated by Matt Baker."

  "That little harlot, Sophia, has been talking to you. As I no longer work there, I can tell you it's true. It took us two weeks to discover the culprit was Baker. Until recently, I was head of Hospital Support Services. Three days ago, they told me I was no longer needed." Whitehead's eyes crawled up my legs and lingered on my crotch. The guy gave me the creeps.

  "How did you discover it was him?" Scott asked.

  "Finding him was all Andrei Petrov's work," Whitehead recalled. "Baker used the name 'Jabberwocky' in the ransom email sent to the CEO, Lewis, and we intercepted—"

  "You mean senior hospital management has known about the hack since it happened?" Prentiss asked.

  "No, we intercepted the ransom email and didn't let it reach Lewis. Do try to keep up." Whitehead leaned back in the recliner and sipped on his wine. I just hoped the slimeball was wearing something underneath the bathrobe.

  "What happened then," I asked.

  Whitehead explained, "like all hackers, he bounced his connection to us through servers in other countries around the globe, many of whom are unfriendly to the US. We couldn't see his IP address, and we needed it to locate him. Andrei searched for anyone using the same online handle 'Jabberwocky.'' He found a user by that name on an online bulletin board popular with hackers. We were able to read his posts. In them, he boasted about expecting a life-changing payout from a hospital, which we took to mean Abbey Mount."

  Whitehead paused to drink his wine, then continued:

  "Hackers are trolls who like screwing with people, doing pranks, but many times they are too smart for their own good. Baker usually bounced his connection around the world to disguise his IP address when he wrote on the board. One day he slipped up and didn't. We're not the police, and couldn't just ask the bulletin board administrators for Jabberwocky's IP address, so Andrei hacked in and retrieved it. That gave us Matt Baker's name and address. I was going to visit the little turd and talk some sense into him until that brute came into my home and tied Sophia and me up."

  I didn't buy Whitehead's affable persona. He had stalked and assaulted Ashley, and I knew from complaints we'd received that he preyed on young women.

  "Did you see who did that to you?" Prentiss shuffled in his seat.

  "I know now it was Brickman." A preoccupied look swept across Whitehead's face.

  Tracy started giggling. "You have to see this video, Pat. Cracks me up."

  "Shut the fuck up, Tracy," Whitehead glowered at her. He turned back to me, and his forced smile returned.

  "You recognized Brickman?" I asked him.

  "Sophia saw him at the supermarket. She recognized his voice and sent me his picture. He was always bullying people, like when he learned Baker's name and told Andrei he was going to kill the little moron. It seems Brickman tied me up while he did just that. You should check with Andrei. He has my job now. When I got back to work after the home invasion here, the one Brickman perpetrated, he threatened to kill me if I spoke to anyone about the hacking."

  "You didn't tell us how Baker was able to break into the hospital mainframe computer."

  "The oldest hacking trick there is. The victim is
induced to click on a link in an email by some fake advertisement. Win a free vacation, for example." Patrick said, his voice brimming with the excitement of a professor explaining his latest research. "In our case, it took her to a fake webpage and infected our servers with malware. After that, Baker could enter our computer network with no restrictions on what he could do."

  "Did you know an Ashley Logan?" I asked.

  Whitehead's smile froze then vanished. "I may have met someone by that name once or twice."

  "Isn't it true you assaulted her? Afterward, you stalked her, and frightened her to the point that she was forced to take out a restraining order against you?"

  "Now hold on," Whitehead snapped. "The lying little bitch said a lot of things to the judge which weren't true."

  "Sounds like you have a lot of anger toward her. Where were you on Monday the 6th, between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.?

  "It's time for you to leave." He began to rise.

  "Not so fast. If you don't tell us where you were, we'll take you in for questioning." Technically I couldn't while I was suspended, but Prentiss could.

  "Let me see." Whitehead sat back down and pondered with a faraway look. "I got to work at 7:30 a.m. and didn't leave until the evening."

  "Can anyone verify that?" I demanded.

  "Andrei Petrov will—he's the leader of the Networking and Infrastructure Group at Abbey Mount Hospital. We were both working crazy hours to uncover the name of the hacker. Check with him."

  "We will be speaking to Petrov. Where were you before 7:30?"

  "I would have left home at around 7:15. It's only a short drive to work. Sophia will tell you. I can't remember her last name, but you seem to know how to find her."

  "What make and model car do you drive?"

  "It's a BMW 3 Series. I bought it yesterday with my severance money. You don't seriously believe I killed Logan?"

  "What did you have before that?"

  "A Ford Focus," he snapped.

  "We'll need a sample of your DNA, for elimination purposes."

  'This is beyond ridiculous. I'll be speaking to an attorney."

  As we left, Tracy was laughing and trying to show an agitated Whitehead something on her phone. We walked back to our cars, and Prentiss said:

  "Do you think he killed the women?"

  "He's a creepy boob-and-ass-staring guy, but my intuition says no. He would make a better suspect if there were a sexual component to the murders. You should check out his alibis, though."

  "All his talk about hacking could be a way to get back at the hospital for firing him."

  "I suspect he's bitter for being let go—who wouldn't be? He also plays the victim card well, but everything he said sounds plausible. It might be worth checking his social media accounts. If you need confirmation on the hacking, you can ask this Petrov character when you check Whitehead's alibi. But you have enough to arrest Brickman with Kayla Ellis' testimony. Testing the syringe, I gave you should help to substantiate her story. Just remember I was never here when you speak to Townsend."

  CHAPTER 47

  WHILE DRIVING HOME FROM the meeting with Whitehead, I received a call from Detective's Assistant Jackie Orvar wanting to discuss her research. I cautioned her that being seen with me would not help her career. She was insistent and suggested an early lunch at Pablo's, an authentic hole-in-the-wall Mexican place, where English was the second language in the kitchen. It was far enough out of the way, to be assured of not meeting anyone from the police department. The place was pure kitsch. The murals covering the walls and ceiling depicted Rancho San Francisco, imagining what the Bay Area might have looked like in the 1800s.

  The Maître d' showed us to a table for two, and the waiter quickly brought a basket of chips with mouth-numbing salsa. Jackie ordered a guacamole salad, and I went for a steaming bowl of chicken tortilla soup, which came with a plate of fixings.

  "I've been researching the list you gave me, and it gets stranger and stranger," Jackie began. "Remember I told you all the children on it died from cancer."

  "We talked about malpractice, which wouldn't be a police matter," I said. "And we know Beth was working on an article about parents who had lost children to illnesses like cancer. That's what she told Ananda Willis and Doctor Walker."

  The waiter arrived with our meals, and we both attacked the freshly made dishes.

  "That's not the weirdest part," Jackie continued. "I was searching for a common factor linking the children. The dates on the list span fifteen years. In that time, hundreds of children in the area have died from cancer. So, what is special about these thirty children, I wondered."

  "Just what did you find?"

  "Something that might answer the question of why the children were on the same list. We already know they were all treated by Dr. Walker at Abbey Mount Hospital. I'm aware it's already a line of inquiry."

  I nodded and drank my soup, wanting Jackie to hurry up and get to the point.

  "I looked into their parents, where they lived and worked, what they were involved in. I found that all the children had at one time lived at the Brockway Apartment complex for a year or more. Every one of them was living there in the months leading up to the child's cancer diagnosis. Odd, don't you think?"

  "It is curious. You think something there could be giving them cancer? If it's in the environment, it wouldn't be a police matter," I said. "Environmental Health would investigate. From what I've read of Beth, it would be the kind of story that would get her attention."

  "What if a nearby factory is dumping toxic waste and it's seeping into the groundwater, poisoning the kids?" Jackie regarded me with a raised eyebrow.

  "Wouldn't they have other symptoms like dizziness and trouble breathing long before they got cancer? And the parents would be affected too. I'm not a doctor, but I had some medical training in the military."

  "I suppose you're right. It seemed like such a good lead," she conceded.

  We spent the rest of the meal discussing Jackie's love life, my lack of one, and we solved most of the country's political disagreements.

  I ARRIVED BACK AT my cottage with less certainty than I'd shown Jackie about what could have caused the children's illnesses, and how it related to the Brockway Apartments. The connection seemed to quash the idea that Beth was looking into medical malpractice. I spent the next hour Googling environmental cancer causes and looking into Dr. Walker's background in pediatrics.

  A call from Prentiss interrupted my thoughts.

  "I don't know why I'm telling you this when you're suspended," he said, "but Andrei Petrov has confirmed everything Whitehead told us about the hack. Brickman did threaten the lives of several people, including the Baker kid, so we're going to pull him in for questioning. I also met Kayla Ellis and got a formal statement from her. Brickman will need a cast-iron alibi for the night of Baker's death, for me not to arrest him for murder."

  I told him what I'd learned from Jackie at lunch, but he dismissed it saying I saw dark conspiracies everywhere I looked.

  After I hung up, I cursed Prentiss for his narrow view of policing. From my online search, I'd found one possibility. It seemed farfetched, but it would be easy to rule out if I borrowed the right equipment.

  I MET CHRIS ANDREWS in the deserted parking lot of Tony's Beverages. Tufts of dead grass growing through the cracked pavement were choked with fast food packaging and condom wrappers. It was a popular place for young people to hang out after dark. The liquor store had gone out of business three years earlier after racketeering charges were brought against its owner, Tony Duvaletti. The building was tainted by the scandal and had stood empty ever since.

  "Are you sure about this?" Andrews set a carryall holding the tools and equipment I'd requested on the concrete. "If this is the problem, the State Environmental Health folk need to investigate."

  "I need to check out the possibility," I said. "I can't just leave it hanging out there."

  He showed me how to use the gadgets, then helped me load everything
into my backpack.

  "Have you seen Townsend?" I asked. "I like to keep my enemies close. Now I'm not going to the station every day, I've no idea what he's up to."

  "I haven't seen him, but I'm keeping an eye on your interests. Prentiss isn't always the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's not Townsend's boy either." He handed me a snub-nosed revolver and a box of ammo. "I didn't know if you had a backup weapon, so take this. Everyone misses you. Just be careful—okay?"

  I thanked him and drove back to the main road but hadn't gone more than a couple of blocks before a black SUV—possibly an Explorer—caught my attention in my rearview mirror. Something about the driver didn't look right. Pascoe? I executed a right turn at the next lights, and the SUV followed.

  Time to shake him off.

  In the downtown where Church Street crosses Canyon Creek Road, there was a junction without a left turn filter arrow at the lights. The place was notorious for traffic backups, and locals knew to avoid it like the plague. The City's response to complaints was that a left turn lane would require demolishing several buildings and just wasn't feasible. I was first in line at a red light there, with my tail right behind me. As soon as the lights turned green, I gunned the Jeep and turned left, narrowly missing an oncoming truck. It was the first vehicle in a long line of traffic preventing my tail from making the turn and following me. Two more quick turns ensured that he wouldn't know which way to go to catch up. As soon as I was in the clear, I drove to the Brockway Apartments.

  The sun was low in the sky by the time I'd parked the Jeep between two abandoned cars at the back of the parking lot. I crossed my fingers that the wheels would still be there when I returned. After checking both weapons, I stashed the smaller gadgets in my jeans pockets and hoisted the backpack onto my shoulders.

  My first stop was to be a maintenance shed I'd previously seen behind the apartments. Perhaps noxious chemicals stored there were leaking into the ground, poisoning the kids. To hide my movements, I ducked down and jogged to the tree line beyond the piles of discarded trash. The dense foliage gave me excellent cover, as I threaded my way through the pines and cedars. A noise from behind made me freeze, and I scanned the darkening woodland, listening intently. Hearing nothing more than squawk of the chiquitas, and the thumping of my heart, I pressed forward. After my precautions, any sound was more likely made by deer than humans.