Stone Eater (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 2)

by D. F. Bailey

  He drew her hand into his. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Didn’t I?” She tipped her head to one side. “If you really want me to believe that, you can delete it.”

  Their eyes wove together. After a moment he took the phone, found the new video file, tilted the screen at an angle to ensure that she could see it and then dragged it into the trash.

  “Good enough?” he asked.

  They both knew that it was an idle gesture. If he needed it, any phone technician could retrieve the video recording in five minutes.

  “Yeah. I’m okay with it. And with us,” she added. “How about you?”

  “That was pretty crazy, you know.” He pointed toward the door, as if they’d just tossed the carcass of an exorcised demon down the staircase.

  “Yeah. Let’s not do that again, okay? Too much drama.”

  “No. It was a mistake.”

  “So.” She turned her head to him. “I think this is when you kiss me.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’ll die if you don’t.” She drew his hand onto her thigh. “I mean it.”

  “Well,” he said as he studied her face, “we can’t have that now, can we.”

  ※

  Finch awoke in the middle of a long, dreamy sequence that lifted him from a deep sleep into the awareness that his fingers lay curled around Eve’s right breast. He hummed silently to himself, a tune of sleepy satisfaction, and studied the tattoo on her shoulder blade. A rose in full blossom, a flower the size of his hand. He leaned forward a few inches and pressed his lips to it. She sighed and turned onto her back so that his hand fell away.

  “All right, Mr. Finch. Enough. We can’t do this all night and all day!” She clawed the sheet away from the bed and stood beside him. “I get to shower first. Then you.”

  Thirty minutes later, as he sipped his first espresso of the day he began to scan the forensic report About Gianna’s cell phone. The sixteen pages contained various data compilations and summaries. Lists of her text messages, incoming and out-going calls, web pages that she’d browsed over the past month. The document included a GPS map showing her travels over the previous weeks, including her meanderings around Astoria and Cannon Beach in Oregon. The terminal point showed the phone in her apartment on Lombard Street, where Eve had retrieved it along with Gianna’s thumb drive.

  “And this tells us what, exactly?” He lifted his head and watched Eve buttering some toast. She set two pieces on a plate and passed it to him.

  “Among other things, that she turned her phone off ten seconds after her last text to me.”

  “And that means?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged and sat beside him and chewed on the corner of her toast. “But it’s unusual. Why does anyone turn off their phone?

  He considered the obvious. “To reset it. Or when you don’t want anyone to hear it ring.”

  She nodded. “Like that bear who attacked me. Maybe she didn’t want him to hear it. I know he’s the same asshole who tossed my apartment.”

  “You think he’s the same guy?” Finch took another sip of coffee.

  “Sure of it.” She frowned. “Connie let me examine the CCTV tape from the Ton Kiang Restaurant. You can just make him out moving from behind the corner to his car. A black BMW X3. He must have slipped out the rear door as we were going up the staircase.”

  “What about the license plate?”

  She swallowed more coffee and pressed her lips together with a look of distaste. “You can make out one digit and a letter. A ’6’ in the second position, but it could be an ‘8’. And an ‘I’ in the fifth position, but it could be a ‘J’. Or even an ‘L’. I asked a friend to compile a list of possibilities.”

  A friend. Finch smiled at this. Along with almost two million dollars, Eve’s dismissal from the SFPD had secured a long list of women who would provide any information she required for as long as they worked on the force. After her departure new personnel policies required equity training for everyone from the chief to rookie beat cops. If nothing more, the work-place tone changed, and for that Eve won the loyalty of almost every woman in the department. Her martyrdom had elevated her to a status she could never obtain in forty years on the inside.

  “And then what?”

  “Then I go after him, Will.” A look of surprise crossed her face. How could he ask? “No one screws me like that. Not twice in one month.”

  “What about twice in one day?” He smiled, an attempt to shift her mood.

  She leaned forward and tugged at his hair. “Clever man. I’ll go after you next if you’re not careful.”

  Her phone buzzed.

  “Leanne, hi. What’s up?” She stepped away from the table and stood at the window overlooking Geary Boulevard and continued the conversation in a low tone that Finch couldn’t hear.

  As she talked Finch turned his attention to the forensic report. Someone would have to sort out Gianna’s pattern of calls and text messages over the past month, and then identify who contacted whom. Maybe he could convince Wally to assign one of the interns to the job. It could easily chew up an entire day or two, and the interns always wanted to impress the boss with their tech savvy.

  Eve finished her call and returned to the kitchen table.

  “That was Leanne from the pathology lab. There’s good news, bad news and more bad news. Terrible news, in fact.”

  Finch set the report aside. “Start at the top.”

  “She was able to profile the DNA from the blood on the floor.” She pointed to carpet where she’d collected the blood after the break-in. “That’s the good news.”

  “And the bad?”

  “It doesn’t match anything in the national data bank.”

  Finch set his eyes on the ceiling. “So our bad guy is new to the game. Or so good at it that he’s never been caught.”

  “Maybe. But Leanne had some second thoughts. She says she doesn’t know what made her double check it. One of those woo-woo moments.” She waved an open hand next to her ear.

  “What?”

  “The terrible news. On a hunch Leanne compared the profile to Gianna’s case.” Eve sat at the table and leaned forward. “The blood DNA matches one of the semen samples found in her vagina during the autopsy.”

  Stunned, Finch slumped in his chair. After a moment the implications began to surface in his mind.

  “Do you see it? It’s all knitting together. The bastard who attacked me is the same person who broke into my condo. The same asshole who raped and murdered Gianna.”

  He dropped his face into his hands and tried to wash away the feeling of horror that rose through him. “Good God.”

  “Yeah. Your bunk-mate, Finch.”

  “Christ, don’t say that.” He shot her a dark look and glanced away. “Why would you say that? It’s just sick.”

  “It’s getting personal now, isn’t it?” She studied him carefully, gauging his resolve.

  He curled his lips as if he was about to spit onto the floor. No matter what he tried, he knew the bitter taste in his mouth would linger. After a moment he looked across the table at her.

  “Okay. You’re right.” He narrowed his eyes. “We’re going after this bastard. Both of us. And the sooner the better.”

  ※ — ELEVEN — ※

  WALLY WALKED DOWN the aisle into the bog and stood above Finch’s cubicle. “My office in two minutes,” he growled. His head flicked toward Fiona and caught her eye. “You, too.”

  Rarely did Wally deign to enter the bog. Usually he stuck to his own office or the boardroom. If he wanted to see you, he’d send an email. In urgent cases, he’d buzz your desk phone. But a personal visit? Maybe once a month.

  When he turned and walked away, Fiona looked at Finch with a blank expression and shrugged her shoulders. Finch shook his head and mouthed, what the hell?

  “Okay, so I just had lunch with Jim Densil, the station manager over at KKKQ” — Wally waved a hand to the chairs opposite his desk and
Finch and Fiona settled into place — “and the Diesel, as we called him, explained that irresistible forces insisted that Gianna Whitelaw committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “What about my interviews with Edwards and his crew? I’ve got all three of them on record.” Fiona’s voice faltered when she realized that the facts she’d gathered, and her integrity, were in question.

  “I know all that.” Wally waved a hand. “Don’t worry, it’s not about you. Despite Edwards’s testimonials, Diesel isn’t deviating from his story. So far.”

  “So who are these irresistible forces?” Will asked.

  “That,” he said and pointed a finger at Finch, “that is the money question. The first law of investigative journalism states that where there are irresistible forces at play, they are supported by an irresistible pile of cash.”

  Wally set his arms on the desk and leaned forward. “All right let’s not mince words here. The local TV and radio stations covered the story as a suicide. The autopsy was sealed and Gianna’s body cremated. I’ve known Diesel since we were cub reporters. The guy couldn’t bluff his way to winning a poker pot if he held a straight flush. An hour ago he all but confessed that there’s a cover-up of some kind regarding Gianna. If she was murdered, then we owe it to her to find out how and who did her in.”

  Finch pulled his chair closer. “Wally, that’s what I’ve been saying.”

  He waved his hand again. “So where are you at with Gianna’s cell phone and thumb drive?”

  “I’ve got a copy of the cell phone forensics report. It covers the last month. Sixteen pages. Can you give me an intern?”

  “Use Finkleman,” Fiona said. “He’s a data ninja.”

  “Okay,” Wally said. “I’ll get Dixie to re-assign him this afternoon. And listen. I want you to construct a story out of whatever patterns emerge. Just a nudge will do it. Something to keep the story alive until we uncover what’s really gone down here. Meanwhile, what about the thumb drive?”

  “Tough nut to crack. I’ve got Mother Russia trying to split it open.”

  “Mother Russia?” Fiona’s frown shifted to a look of surprise.

  Finch dismissed her question with a wayward glance. “Never mind, it’s just a crazy name. The people I live with are all tech nerds. But they know what they’re doing. I’ll let you know when I’m in.”

  “And what about Gianna’s missing computer?”

  “No one seems to have found it,” he said. He hadn’t told anyone about his idea to access Gianna’s files in the Google cloud. Better to keep that option in reserve.

  A moment of silence arose as everyone considered how to revive the story.

  “What about Betsy Smith? Anything ever come of her?”

  Finch shrugged. “No surprise, I guess.” He hoped she’d be forgotten. It now seemed too late to reveal that Betsy Smith was in fact Eve Noon. He shook his head with a look of disappointment, the grimace every reporter wore whenever a hot lead turned cold.

  “All right. Anything else? Any other angles?”

  “Maybe.” Finch looked at Fiona.

  “Maybe what?” Wally scowled. “You know better than to tease me.”

  “Maybe we can get the twins to talk. One of them anyway. No one’s heard a word from either of them.”

  Wally raised an eyebrow. “Fiona? You tried that didn’t you?”

  She nodded, unsure what to suggest. “I can try again. Maybe in a different way this time.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t know. Try something less formal.”

  Wally leveled his head and set his eyes on her. “Keep it above board,” he said. “And be careful.”

  He stood and lifted both hands, palms up, into the air. “Okay, meeting’s over. Back to work. While you two are shaking the bushes, I’m going to find a name attached to our irresistible force.”

  ※

  Finch set his laptop on the kitchen table beside Gianna’s cellphone.

  “I can’t promise anything with this,” he said and tried to catch Eve’s attention.

  “You already said that,” she mused as she opened the French doors leading onto the balcony and studied the ornate landscape in the back yard behind Mother Russia.

  “I can’t believe you live in Nob Hill. In a palace like this.” She returned to the living room and swept her arms around the apartment with an expression of disbelief on her face. “But your ride is a rusting Ford Focus.”

  “Company car. A loaner.” He launched the web browser on his laptop.

  She walked towards the bedroom, stuck her head through the door. “And you’ve got a four-poster bed!”

  Finch lifted his head and called into the bedroom where Eve had disappeared. “Look, I’m trying this now.” He waited a moment and then raised his voice. “I’ve got the Google page open. Are you ready for this?”

  “Yes.” Her head rounded the doorframe.

  “Okay. Come.”

  He wagged a finger. Her child-like mood had infected him, a welcome relief. In fact, Eve provided the only distraction he now enjoyed. Perhaps that’s why they made love so often, to cast their minds away from Gianna’s murder.

  Despite their mutual infatuation they always returned to the problem of Gianna. And almost every day a new possibility emerged. The partial license plate, the DNA match, Fiona’s discovery that Gianna couldn’t have jumped from the bridge, Wally’s lead about a high-level cover-up. The mysteries contained in the locked thumb drive.

  And now this, the possibility that Finch might be able to access her computer files. When Eve revealed that Gianna did use a Google account for her email, Finch’s anticipation sharpened. He could apply the same two-factor verification protocol to unlock her account that he employed with his own files when he didn’t have his personal computer at hand.

  “Okay, type in her email address here.”

  Eve leaned over his arms and typed in the account name.

  “All right.” He brushed her hand away and took over the keyboard. “And her cellphone password is gianna, right?”

  “All lower case.”

  With a flush of optimism, Finch typed in the letters. Could it be this simple? He hit the enter key. The screen flashed two words: Wrong Password.

  “Damn.”

  He pushed the keyboard away.

  “Now, now. Impatient boy.” Eve leaned over him again, pulled the laptop toward her and tried something new: giannawhitelaw.

  Wrong Password.

  “You see? I’ll have to give this to Sochi to solve.”

  “Sochi?”

  “The name of the guy trying to crack open the thumb drive.”

  She tried again: raymond.

  A new message appeared: Enter verification code sent to 415-555-2269.

  Seconds later, Gianna’s phone buzzed and Eve lifted it in her hand.

  “That’s it!” A look of surprise crossed her face. She read the text message aloud. “So. The code is 546417.”

  Finch typed the numbers into the code slot on his laptop, checked the box marked Remember verification for this computer? and clicked Verify. In an instant the screen changed. He could see Gianna’s email, a long list of opened and unopened messages. From here he could navigate to all her documents, spreadsheets, photos, chats — whatever she’d stored in the Google cloud. In short, he’d entered her world.

  Once again.

  ※ — TWELVE — ※

  DEAN WHITELAW SAT in his home office overlooking San Francisco Bay and drew heavily on his cigar. The view through the picture window was spectacular no matter where you looked. Even when the fog slid under the Golden Gate Bridge and lay thick on the bay, he felt as if he occupied a special place in the world. Marin County had bounced back from the crash faster than anywhere else in the country. In fact, his agent’s last real estate appraisal (seventeen million dollars) showed the value of his home now exceeded the pre-crash high in 2008 by two million. Well, he’d worked hard for it. They all had. And the reward
s for hard work, intelligence, and good luck lay before him.

  He sorted through the mail that his wife had stacked on his desk. Bills, invitations to fund-raisers, thank-you notes. Then he noticed a thin, five-inch square envelope with his name and address typed on a sticky label that someone had pressed onto the package at a slight angle. Strange.

  As he lifted the envelope the knuckles in his right hand pulsed with pain and he cursed himself for slapping Toby Squire with such force. Even a week later, his hand throbbed at the slightest touch. He dabbed some A535 gel onto his skin and rubbed it tenderly over his flesh. Sometimes that helped.

  He turned his attention back to the package, slipped a knife under the paper flap and delicately pried open the seal. A DVD dropped into his hand and he took a moment to examine the interior of the package. Nothing. He slid the DVD into his computer and watched as a grainy video began to play on the screen. A voice-over accompanied the video stream and he had to nudge up the volume to make out what the narrator — obviously no professional — had to say.

  “Good day, Mr. Whitelaw. What you are now viewing is a video taken from my smart phone on Monday, May eighteenth. I apologize for the low resolution, but as you’ll see, the definition is sufficient enough to identify your Mercedes-Benz S 600 Pullman Guard limousine. How can we be sure it’s your car? As you’ll see toward the end of the video, your license plate is clearly visible. I won’t say exactly where this scene takes place, except that it’s somewhere in Cow Hollow.”

  Dean scanned the background but couldn’t make out any familiar buildings or roads. The camera remained focused on the car a good three minutes without revealing any movement. The date-stamp on the screen displayed 18-05-2016. The day before Gianna’s body washed ashore.

  Whitelaw felt a new flash of rheumatoid arthritis bolt through every bone in his right hand. With a gasp he touched the pause button on the video screen. He found the bottle of prednisone in his desk drawer, placed a tab of the medication on his tongue and washed it down with the last dregs of coffee in his mug.