How to Succeed in Murder

by Margaret Dumas

  Jack looks good in Armani.

  Brenda, Eileen, Simon and I took our places and waited for Morgan’s arrival to ring up the curtain. Nods were exchanged. Conversation was murmured and minimal.

  “Does anybody know where MoM is?” Krissy’s high voice cut through the quiet.

  Nobody who knew was telling.

  Things were starting to get fidgety when the door opened again. All the Zakdan execs sat up taller and began straightening their clothes when Morgan entered the room. But that was perhaps less because of Morgan, and more because of the man striding in next to him.

  Harry.

  His cigar was a flagrant violation of state smoking regulations, and his hula-girl shirt was a slap in the face to corporate dress codes, but his wealth guaranteed that the staff of Zakdan would sooner die than point that out to him.

  Morgan made a round of introductions, and I did my best not to react when Harry winked at me. Or maybe it was at Brenda, but it was in our general direction.

  “I don’t know about anyone else,” he said with a broad grin, “but I’d like to hear what these folks have to say about this place.”

  He looked at Eileen. “You ready?”

  She nodded briskly, rose, and flipped a switch on the conference table’s elaborate center console. Suddenly the screen of her laptop was replicated on large flat-panel monitors mounted at either end of the room, and the SFG logo was on display.

  The SFG logo had been created the night before by her ten-year-old son, but it looked good enough for the purpose of the meeting.

  “The evaluation of Zakdan has had two distinct branches,” she began. “As you all know, the SFG team has concentrated on understanding the business models and overall viability of the corporation as a whole.”

  Heads nodded on the Zakdan side of the table.

  “Concurrent with our efforts, the consultants from MJC have been conducting an investigation of the core technology and intellectual property of the company.”

  That caused a little ripple of something. I thought Bob was going to speak up, then he just stuffed his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans and looked sulky.

  Eileen continued. “I think it would be the most effective use of our time to turn things over to Jack Fairfax and Mike Papas, of MJC, for a discussion of their technical findings.”

  “Excuse me,” Troy spoke. “Was Jim Stoddard aware you were examining the code?”

  “Yes,” Jack answered for Eileen. “He was very aware of our activities.”

  “Morgan,” Troy addressed the CEO, “I really think if we’re going to proceed with this we should have some representative of the Engineering function here. Have you named Jim’s replacement yet?”

  Morgan stared at the Marketing VP. The phrase “not yet cold in his grave” could have been written in script on the wall behind him.

  “It’s a little premature, Troy. And we do have a representative of the Engineering function here. We have Bob.”

  Bob looked like he’d just found an electric eel in the bottom of his latte.

  “Bob?” The scorn in Troy’s voice was clear.

  “Yes, me.” The Quality Assurance VP got over his shock and sat up a little straighter. “Coding and testing go hand in hand. Both functions, working together, make up an Engineering organization.”

  Score one for Bob.

  “In any case,” Harry rumbled, “I’d like to hear what you came up with, Jack.” His eyes glittered.

  Jack nodded. “What we came up with was a deliberate and systematic effort, occurring over years and across multiple releases, to implant a sophisticated series of delayed-release viruses at the most fundamental levels of the Zakdan code.”

  It took a minute for everyone to realize what he’d said, mainly because he’d spoken so casually. He might just as well have been remarking “gosh, it looks like rain” instead of informing them that their company was sitting squarely on a time bomb.

  Krissy reacted first. “Excuse me?”

  Jack looked at her. “My colleagues and I specialize in system security. And it became obvious to us that some individual or group has been planting increasingly complex viruses in every product released by Zakdan for the last decade.”

  She stared at him for a minute, then shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. We would have known about it. We would have gotten Tech Support calls.”

  “Not if the virus hadn’t been triggered yet,” Mike told her. “The only calls you got were the results of accidental triggers that set off small corruptions in individual applications. The pattern wasn’t obvious, but it was there.”

  “But how could someone do that?” Krissy protested.

  “Yes, how?” Troy challenged. “It doesn’t even sound possible.”

  “It would take planning and patience and access to the code at the highest level,” Jack explained. “It’s exactly the sort of scenario that Homeland Security has been concerned about.”

  “Homeland Security?” Tonya echoed.

  Mike spoke up. “Terrorist cells have been known to operate for years, with a single goal, working in isolation for the day when they can unleash something of a scale that would otherwise be inconceivable.”

  “Terrorist cells?” Bob’s complexion had taken on an alarming purple cast. “No way. There’s no way terrorists could have gotten access to the code.”

  Jack looked at him. “As a matter of fact, our liaison from the SFPD agrees with you. He feels it’s a simple criminal affair.”

  Inspector Yahata, right on cue, slipped into the room. A frisson of electricity circled the table.

  “Hello, Inspector.” Harry pulled out the chair next to him, clearly enjoying the unfolding show. “Have a seat.”

  “So the only question remaining—” Jack’s voice made several people jump— “is who had that kind of access, over that period of time, to the Zakdan code?” He looked around the table. “Inspector, do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

  Yahata sat with his hands, fingertip to fingertip, on the table before him. “Our investigation has yielded evidence that Jim Stoddard, the late executive vice president of Engineering, was the mastermind behind the plan.”

  “No way,” Krissy murmured.

  “Stoddard appears to have long nursed a resentment towards the original founders of the company, Zak Bridges and Dan Maceri, with whom he was a student at Brown,” Yahata continued. “He was deeply hostile toward them for what he perceived as their condescension in offering him a job when they were in the early phase of the company. He believed himself to be a far more gifted programmer than either of them, and that it was his genius that was ultimately responsible for the success of the company.”

  “You’re shitting me,” Troy said. “You are absolutely shitting me. How could you know that?”

  I didn’t think the inspector cared for his language. “Jim Stoddard, like many egomaniacs, kept a journal.”

  It was probably just my imagination that he looked at Harry when he said “egomaniac.”

  “Why?” Tonya asked, her eyes huge. “Why would he have done something like that? He can’t have just wanted to bring all the systems down—was he going to hold up the company for ransom or something?”

  “If that had been his motivation,” the detective replied, “he would have had ample opportunity to act upon it.”

  “Then why?” Krissy wailed.

  Harry said one word.

  “Power.”

  They all stared at him.

  Jack spoke. “It gave Jim a tremendous sense of power to know that he had his finger on the button.”

  “But I still don’t understand how it can have gone on for so long,” Krissy said. “I mean, why wasn’t this virus discovered? Why didn’t anyone find it in all the testing over all the—”

  She stopped, and turned to stare at Bob.

  I’d been watching him turn from purple to very, very white. And now that everyone was looking at him, he went a shade paler.

  “
You said it, Bob,” I spoke to him. “Coding and testing go hand in hand.”

  His eyes flashed, and he looked at Inspector Yahata.

  “Jim would have been nothing without me.”

  Jackpot.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Bob stood, and swayed on his feet for a moment. Sweat darkened circles under his arms and around the neck of his tired tee-shirt. He patted the pockets of his baggy jeans as if he was looking for something.

  “Are you all right?” Brenda asked. She pulled a pack of tissues from her purse and reached over to hand it to him.

  “Don’t!” I yelled, but it was too late.

  Bob grabbed Brenda by the arm as he pulled a gun from his pocket. He yanked her toward him until they stood together, his gun to her head. He looked as surprised as she did, then both their expressions changed.

  He was as terrified as she was.

  Harry, Eileen, Simon and I had all leapt to our feet as it happened. Now Bob gestured to us with the gun. “Sit down! I’m in control here.” He swallowed, then looked at Harry.

  “Who has the power now?”

  His voice shook, but there was a feverish light in his eyes.

  “Mr. Adams,” Inspector Yahata spoke calmly. “This is not something you want to do.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want!” he yelled, and we all cringed as Brenda squeezed her eyes closed.

  Bob licked his lips. “I’ll tell you what I want. I want a helicopter. On the roof. Now.”

  Yahata regarded him evenly. “I’m not in a position to get that for you. But if you hand me the gun—”

  “I am,” Harry cut the detective off. “I can get you a helicopter and whatever else you want. Just stay calm and don’t hurt anybody.” The expression on his face when he looked at Brenda made my heart stop.

  Bob’s eyes darted back and forth between Yahata and my uncle.

  I hadn’t brought my gun to the meeting, figuring that between Jack, Mike and Inspector Yahata, we’d have all the firepower we needed. So why weren’t they doing anything?

  “I’m going to reach into my pocket for my cell phone,” Harry said. “Nice and easy, and I’ll get you the best goddamn helicopter you’ve ever seen.”

  Bob nodded quickly. “Do it.”

  Harry reached into one of the vast pockets of his cargo pants and came out with a sleek black cell phone. “See, nice and easy. Now you just think about what else you want. You just name it and I’ll get it for you.”

  I shot a look toward Jack, who kept his eyes trained on Bob. He spoke evenly.

  “What do you want, Bob? Because I don’t think this is anything you ever wanted.”

  “Just be quiet and let me think,” Bob snapped.

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Sure. But this can’t be how Jim told you it would all turn out.”

  Bob laughed, a little too hysterically for my taste. “Jim told me it was about the money,” he said. “All these years, it was about the money. Jim said the Zakdan board would pay anything for the bug fix, once they knew what we were capable of doing. We were going to make more money than God.”

  Harry, who had more money than God, nodded as he dialed his phone.

  “Enough money for you to get away from everything,” I said as soothingly as I knew how. “Enough for you to buy that sheep farm in Scotland.”

  He stiffened. “How do you know about that?”

  “I think it’s a great idea.” I kept my voice soft as my mind raced. “It sounds beautiful. The hills and the heather…”

  He relaxed slightly as we heard Harry speaking into his phone about a helicopter and giving the location of the Zakdan building.

  “This is all your fault,” Bob said to Jack. “If you hadn’t come along, Jim wouldn’t have gotten so crazy.”

  Jack nodded. “He knew we’d found out about him.”

  “He should have killed you,” Bob told him. “He should have killed you just like he did Kumar.”

  Jim had killed Lalit Kumar. That made sense. Lalit had been a nice guy. So nice a guy that he’d go collect a drunken colleague at one in the morning if he called and said he needed a ride. Jim, with his history of drinking, had probably done it before.

  “Kumar knew about the bug,” Jack said.

  “That stupid bitch!” Bob spit out. “She was too stupid to know what she’d found, but Jim heard her telling Kumar all about it.”

  “Clara,” Morgan spoke. “She told Lalit?”

  “Yes, Clara,” Bob snapped. “It was just lucky for her that she had that accident before Jim got his hands on her.” He swallowed. “Jim would have made her suffer.”

  Brenda made a little sound, and Bob tightened his grip on her.

  “But he did get his hands on Lalit,” I said.

  Bob looked at me, and there was pride in his voice. “He was brilliant. Not just in how he shot Kumar to make it look like suicide, but the way he got the note onto Kumar’s computer. Jim could access any computer at Zakdan remotely. It was—”

  “It was obviously faked,” Jack finished the sentence. “And it didn’t fool Inspector Yahata here for one minute.”

  “Shut up!” Bob yelled. “He should have shot you in your car the first night he tried to get you. But he thought he had more time, and he wanted to make it look like an accident.”

  “So he just stole a big truck and tried to slam into us?” Jack said. “This is your brilliant mastermind? A drunken teenager might have tried the same thing.”

  If he was deliberately trying to make Bob crazy, it was working.

  “Shut up!” he yelled again, squeezing Brenda tighter. “Would a drunken teenager have listened in on your cell phone call to know where you were going that night? Would a drunken teenager talk to everyone you’d met at Zakdan until he found out you live in Pacific Heights? Would a drunken teenager have known the city streets well enough to realize that you’d have to take the tunnel to get to the restaurant from that neighborhood? And be cunning enough know exactly where to wait for you?”

  Right. That explained why Stoddard had never made an attempt on us at the house. He only knew our neighborhood.

  Bob was still talking, but shifting his attention. “He should have killed you the second time—and he would have, too, if she hadn’t come along.” He gestured at me with the gun.

  The hatred when he looked at me was like a physical thing. “Jim was tapping into your email. He read everybody’s email.” He looked back to Jack. “He knew where you’d be that day.”

  “Is that Jim’s gun?” I asked, my eyes fixed on the weapon held to my best friend’s head. “The one he used at the museum?” If so, it must have had a silencer then.

  Bob nodded. “He gave it to me at the bar that night when he told me what had happened.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that, by giving you the gun, your partner was trying to frame you for attempted murder?” Jack asked.

  Bob looked like his head was about to explode. “Don’t say that about him! You didn’t know him!”

  “True,” Jack agreed. “And now I never will.”

  Tears came to Bob’s eyes. “You didn’t have to kill him!”

  “I didn’t,” Jack said softly. “He just had an accident.”

  He was probably right not to get into the whole MoM thing at that point.

  Bob’s eyes widened. “No, you killed him. Don’t lie to me!” He looked over to Harry wildly. “What’s happening with my helicopter?”

  “It’s on its way,” Harry said, showing both hands, one still holding the phone. “Just tell me what else you want. Anything you want…”

  “Money,” Bob said. “Lots of it. Twenty million dollars.”

  “Done,” Harry said, and began dialing another number.

  “Fifty,” Bob yelled. “Fifty million.”

  Harry nodded and spoke into the phone.

  “If you want money,” I said, “you’ve got the wrong hostage.”

  Brenda’s eyes widened. “Charley—”

  “Take m
e,” I said. “I’m worth a lot more than she is. Harry’s my uncle.”

  Bob looked confused.

  “Really,” I told him, my words tumbling out. “Harry’s my uncle and Jack is my husband and I’m rich and I’m a much better hostage.” I’d also rather die than see Brenda get hurt because of a situation I’d put her in.

  “Take me.”

  “Charley, don’t you dare—” Brenda began.

  But Bob acted quickly. He rushed toward me, pushing Brenda to the side, and grabbed me by the elbow, pressing the gun to my temple.

  “Charley!” Harry yelled. “Brenda!”

  Bob’s movement had been the signal for all hell to break loose. Everyone who had been frozen suddenly sprang into action, shouting and trying to get someplace else. Troy knocked Krissy down in his race to the door.

  “All right!” Jack shouted above the chaos. “That’s enough!”

  He reached over and grabbed the gun from Bob’s hand, neatly snapping his wrist as he did so.

  We all stared at him, including Bob.

  Jack looked at me. “You don’t think I’d be crazy enough to let him bring a loaded gun into the room, do you?”

  Which just set off another round of shouting. Bob, as Inspector Yahata moved in to handcuff him. Brenda, punching me in the arm and asking how dare I do such a thing, Harry, babbling incoherently as he pushed his way over to scoop Brenda and me up in the same crushing hug, and me, as soon as I was free, yelling at my husband that he might tell a person what the plan was once in a while.

  Then Eileen and Simon were jumping up and down and hugging, and Troy, Tonya and Krissy were looking at us like we were insane, and Morgan was shaking Mike’s hand and seeming much older than when I’d first met him.

  Jack put his arm around me and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “That was a truly stupid thing to do.” He handed the gun to Yahata.

  “Look who’s talking. When did you empty out the bullets?”

  “Right before the meeting,” Mike answered, slapping Jack on the back. “I distracted Bob while Jack slipped into his office.”

  “And you knew where to look for the gun…?”