Combustion

by Martin J. Smith

  “Perfect,” Chloe said.

  “Don’t judge me. Just… don’t. You don’t know everything I went through, the way your father treated me, the other women. I was entitled to a few hours of happiness. Even if it was alone at night on the computer in my office. Even if it was wrong.”

  They were both crying now, both staring across a gulf of anger and mistrust and fear. Shelby reached for her daughter’s face, hoping a gentle touch could ease the sting.

  Chloe put her own hand over Shelby’s and held it there. “Even—”

  Shelby watched her only child struggle to articulate a thought. When Chloe finally did, Shelby wished she hadn’t done it so well.

  “Even if you hooked up with someone who doesn’t even exist?”

  41

  The website of UltraSharp Digital was far less modest about its role in the world of technology than Holywell had been in his divorce filing. True, it was a small US-based subsidiary of a Taiwanese electronics giant, but that wasn’t always the case. Starke was fascinated by the story he found in the site’s “Corporate History” link.

  Pei Lan Electronics had bought the small US firm only three years earlier, after UltraSharp introduced and began marketing a breakthrough technology that both sharpened and brightened the high-definition screens found in most computers and flat-screen TVs. It was so effective that Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and other computer makers, along with Vizio and Samsung, immediately licensed the UltraSharp technology and started using it in their own machines. Success made the company ripe for takeover, and Pei Lan swept in with a generous offer that brought UltraSharp under its corporate umbrella. That deal left UltraSharp’s long-time management in place, including CEO Richard Holywell, who founded the company in the early 1990s.

  Starke wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. The assets listed in Kerrigan’s divorce papers weren’t shockingly large, but they weren’t exactly modest either. Holywell’s company probably fit the profile of a lot of small tech companies that struggle along for years before a breakthrough product puts it on the map. If Holywell was still working, his cut of the deal must not have been enough to bail out. Starke wondered how that corporate drama played into the downfall of Kerrigan’s marriage. Was Holywell one of those tech-industry workaholics whose sole focus was his company? Had Kerrigan finally drawn the line after too many late nights alone?

  Starke’s ringing cell phone distracted him from his sophomoric, obsessive prying. He glanced at the unfamiliar number of the incoming call.

  “Detective Starke,” he said.

  “Hi. It’s me.”

  Starke had no idea who it was until a hoarse and strangled rowf-rowf in the background triggered a lusty, “Shut up, Churchill,” from the caller.

  “Eric?”

  “I’m telling you: pugs—spawn of Satan.”

  Starke smiled. “So noted.”

  “Anyway, I found your thing.”

  “Which thing?”

  “That Apple.”

  Shelby Dwyer’s dumped computer? Damn. Eric Barbaric worked fast. “That’s great,” Starke said, dampening the excitement in his voice. “Do you have it now?”

  “I’d traded it and a couple of monitors to my friend Reg, and he was planning to parts it out to our friend Dirk, but Dirk’s girlfriend is this, like, psychopath and took off with his car two weekends ago, so he’s been dealing with that and the thing’s been sitting in his bedroom all this time. So, yeah.”

  Starke was completely lost. “But you have it there right now?”

  “Yeah, like I said.”

  Starke had had more coherent conversations with schizophrenics. “Eric, listen to me. Have you tried turning it on? Is there anything on it?”

  “Gimme a sec.”

  Starke waited an eternity, the silence punctuated only by the raspy, two-pack-a-day bark of Churchill the inherited pug.

  “Nothing,” Barbaric said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nope.”

  Starke heard some furious typing, imagined Barbaric surveying hidden pockets and levels of code he couldn’t possibly comprehend. “So basically, you’re saying she reformatted the hard drive before she sold it?”

  “Looks that way.” A pause. “I can keep the hundred bucks, right?”

  “Can you show me? I’ll run over there now and—”

  “Whoa. Hang on.”

  Starke heard a low, sustained whistle on the other end of the line. He sat forward in his chair.

  “Haven’t seen one of these in a while,” Barbaric said. “Dang.”

  Starke waited for the start of another loopy detour. Instead, Barbaric followed up with a single phrase: “CarbonCopy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Somebody was spying,” he said. He hummed the opening notes of the “Dragnet” theme.

  Starke wanted to leap through the phone and grab the kid by the throat. Instead, he drew a deep breath and said, “Eric, please tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s this little thing. Keylogger hardware. Most people use keylogger software, but this little thing, it’s hardware. I’ve only seen a couple of them, like, ever. But here it is, on the end of the keyboard plug, where it sticks into the box. Just noticed it. So somebody was spying on somebody.”

  “From the beginning again, Eric. Please. What are you talking about?”

  An exasperated sigh. “Say your kid’s spending a lot of time locked in his room with his computer, right? You think he’s in there scoping out naughtybits.com or something, only you can’t say for sure, right? But you don’t want him spending all his homework time jerkin’ the gherkin, so you decide to see exactly what he’s doing in there all day and night. There’s two ways to find out. One is a software program. CarbonCopy makes one of those, too. That’s called keylogger software. You just install it on the computer and it records every keystroke—e-mails sent, messaging, logins, passwords, chat conversations, web history, screen snapshots. Everything.”

  The possibilities brought Starke to full attention in his chair. “You’re saying that software was on this computer?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Patience. “Tell me what you’re saying, then, please.”

  “The other way is with keylogger hardware. It’s this little thingy, about the size of a flash drive. It’s a plug. You plug the keyboard plug into it, then plug that into the computer. It just does its thing without anybody ever noticing, unless they check the keyboard plug, which nobody ever does. Woot! Junior’s busted.”

  “So that’s what you found. One of these little spying devices? And it was on this computer?”

  “Bingo. Give me a sec and I can check the specs.”

  Starke hadn’t prayed much after Rosaleen, but he found himself giving thanks. He shuddered, suddenly, to think of that potentially critical piece of evidence sitting among the flotsam and jetsam of Eric Barbaric’s inherited house.

  “Five hundred thousand,” Barbaric said.

  “Five hundred thousand what, Eric?”

  Another impatient sigh. “Keystrokes. That’s its capacity. Anywhere from a couple of days to a full month of data, depending. Want me to download it for you?”

  Starke grabbed his notebook and shield from his desk. “Listen to me carefully, Eric. I’m leaving now. Wait until I get there. I need to be able to watch what you do with this thing. I need to be there when you do it. So give me about fifteen minutes, and make sure you keep that thing in a safe place until then. It could be very important. Understand?”

  “Geez, don’t get all CSI on me.”

  “Just tell me you understand. Tell me you’ll wait ’til I get there.”

  “OK. Geez.”

  Starke hung up. He was reaching for his car keys when he noticed Kerrigan standing, arms folded, in the middle of his office doorway staring at his computer screen. He followed her gaze across the small space to his monitor, which still displayed the home page of UltraSharp Digital. He leaned across his desk chair, a
transparently acrobatic move, and grabbed his mouse. The open window disappeared in one frantic click. Had she seen it?

  Kerrigan uncrossed her arms. “Heading out?”

  “Shelby Dwyer’s computer,” he said. “I think we’ve found it.”

  He moved toward the door.

  Kerrigan stood her ground for an excruciating moment before stepping aside. As he brushed past her, she said, “Let’s plan to talk when you get back.”

  42

  They were fighting a killer who didn’t exist. Chloe had said it perfectly. Still, Shelby said, they were going to fight. Their house would be their bunker, even if he’d already penetrated it once.

  “The driveway gate,” Shelby said. “I just called the security company and let them know I’d changed the code. I changed the access code for the house alarm, too. Remember the new numbers?”

  Chloe nodded.

  “Anytime we go anywhere, the alarm needs to be set. No exceptions. We’ll set it at night when we go to bed, too, so the motion detectors are active. Dad put in all this sophisticated stuff when he built the place, and we need to learn how to use it. It’s worthless unless we use it. Clear?”

  Shelby led her daughter through the foyer to the front door, feeling a sense of dread as she passed the empty space where “Flight” once stood. Chloe seemed to feel it, too.

  “We can’t leave Boz down there, Mom. We have to do something.”

  Shelby nodded, but had no idea what to say.

  “Two locks,” she said, grasping the door handle. A wispy swirl of white ash eddied in on the opening door’s air currents. “Internal deadbolt and external deadbolt. I have no idea how he got around the alarm system last time, but anytime we’re in the house I want both of these locked behind us. And on the sliders out back, it’s not enough to flip the handle lock. Make sure you slide the metal bar into the track behind the door. That way there’s no chance it can be opened from the outside.”

  “OK.”

  Shelby dragged a toe through the gathering ash as she shut the door. “If we have to leave because of the fire, we’ll just find a safe place for a few days and not tell anybody where we’re going. The schools would be closed anyway.”

  Chloe’s face had a helpless, hopeless look. “This is so fucked up. What makes you think he’ll stop after a few days? This could go on forever.”

  Again, Shelby had nothing to say, no reassurances to offer her only child. What options did they have? The man who was terrorizing them was no more tangible than the whirl of ash at her feet.

  She stepped to her left, to the small table that had served as the base for “Flight.” Opening the top drawer, she summoned Chloe to her side. “Dad’s gun is in here now,” she said. “At night we’ll keep it upstairs with us. But during the day, it’ll be down here.”

  Chloe’s eyes were wide and disbelieving. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’ll show you how to use it, just like Dad showed me. Just in case.”

  “Mom,” Chloe said, “this is just nuts.”

  Shelby hit the release and the magazine dropped into her palm. It was filled with .45 caliber shells. “Ready?”

  43

  Eric Barbaric was standing guard at the front door of his house when Starke pulled up. He was holding the wheezing pug under one arm like a football. As Starke stepped out of the car, the kid grinned the grin of someone who knows he just aced a test.

  “Nice job on this, Eric,” Starke said. “This could be very important.”

  “There could be nothing on it, you know. You wouldn’t let me check. It could have been wiped, too, just like the hard drive.”

  Starke hadn’t thought of that. He reached out and scratched the walleyed Churchill’s forehead. The smoke was complicating Churchill’s already difficult breathing. “Why don’t we go in and you can show me what you found?”

  He followed Barbaric through the minefield of thrashed skate shoes, broken skateboard decks, and unopened junk mail between the front door and the kitchen table. An Apple desktop was up and running on the table, and Starke had a hard time taking his eyes off it. Still, he noticed the gentle way the kid carried the dog to the couch and laid him prone on a dirty cushion. Churchill panted on, his tongue lolling to one side like a pink lava flow.

  “You’re sure this is the right computer?” Starke said.

  “It’s the only one I got from Jason that week,” Barbaric said, unfolding a Silicon Recycler sales receipt.

  Starke checked the date: two days after Paul Dwyer disappeared. “So Samani flipped it right away? He sold it to you the day after he bought it?”

  Barbaric nodded. “He doesn’t sell Apples, like I said, so calls me right away whenever he gets one.”

  Starke studied the receipt. “There’s no price here.”

  “I don’t buy them,” he said. “Do I look like I have the money to buy them?”

  “So you have sort of a consignment deal?”

  Barbaric shrugged. “What’s a consignment deal?”

  “He gives you the Apples to sell, and you give him the money after you sell them.”

  Barbaric straightened and squared his shoulders. “Yes, I have a consignment deal.” He waggled his thin eyebrows. “Because I have the connections.”

  “And you just take a percentage of whatever you can sell them for?”

  “Twelve percent. Sucks, I know, but better than nothing. I’d sold this one to Dirk, but he didn’t pay me yet, because of the psycho girlfriend-slash-car situation, so I just went and got it back from him.”

  Starke clarified the correct spelling of Dirk’s full name and wrote it down in his notebook in case chain of custody ever became an issue. When he was done, he said, “Can you show me this CarbonCopy thing?”

  From the far side of the kitchen table, Barbaric pointed to what looked like a small flashlight battery that connected the keyboard plug into the back of the computer. “This thingy just records the keystrokes and keeps a record in the hard drive.”

  “But you said the hard drive was reformatted.”

  “It was.”

  Starke’s hopes faltered. “So there’s no way to find out what this little device recorded during the past few days this computer was in use.”

  “There’s nothing in the computer.” He tapped the machine. “But the data might still be in here.” He tapped the CarbonCopy device. “Wiping the hard drive shouldn’t have affected this. Of course, I’d know that by now if you hadn’t gone all psycho on the phone.”

  Starke smiled. “I just needed to be here, Eric. Can we take a look?”

  Barbaric grabbed a can of Red Bull from the counter and took a long swig. He tapped the can. “Stuff keeps you sharp.” Then he pulled a kitchen chair to the keyboard and hit a few keys. He located the CarbonCopy device, which presented as a detachable drive on the computer’s connected-hardware menu. With another click, the device’s menu popped onto the screen.

  “Still works,” Barbaric said.

  Starke felt his heart rate rise. He imagined the scenario. Suspicious about why his wife was spending so much time online, Paul Dwyer must have decided to find out what she was up to. He was spying on her, and Shelby had no idea. What else could this be? He felt like he was about to intrude into something intensely private, and yet Shelby had unwittingly released it herself into the vast and very public electronics marketplace. He didn’t need a warrant.

  “The moment of truth,” Starke said. “Anything on it?”

  Within seconds, they were looking at a screen full of icons:

  E-mail Sent

  E-mail Received

  Web History

  Instant Messages

  File Operations

  Online Chats

  Scheduled Screen Snapshots

  Empty Cache

  “Let’s try the first one, ‘e-mail sent,’” Starke said.

  Barbaric’s command brought up a series of about two dozen short e-mails, most of them concluding with Shelby Dwyer’s electronic signat
ure and contact information for the Paul Dwyer Foundation. “Does this look like the right computer?” he said.

  The hair on the back of Starke’s neck stood at attention. He was suddenly aware that this was something he really needed to do with the department’s computer forensics guy. “Sure is,” he said. “But I think I’m going to have to take this somewhere else to review it, Eric.”

  “Really?” The kid’s face couldn’t have looked more disappointed if Starke had snatched candy from his hand.

  “Afraid so. Police business. Procedures and all. Can I call you if I need your help navigating this?”

  Barbaric nodded, then started sifting through a seemingly random pile of papers on the table. He pulled a single sheet from a scattered stack and handed it to Stark. It was a copy of the Silicon Recycler receipt that showed what Samani had paid Shelby Dwyer for her computer on the day after her husband disappeared. “Well,” he said, “if you take it I’ll need to pay Jason. It’s a consignment deal, you know.”

  Starke couldn’t see sticking the kid with the cost while his merchandise was in police custody. “How much?”

  Barbaric helpfully tapped the receipt specifying the terms of the sale. “Jason made out. Straight trade, this Apple for a PC.” He snorted. “Cha-ching! So he’s just out the cost of the shit-for-brains PC.”

  Barbaric studied the specs of the refurbished PC Shelby Dwyer had taken in trade. “He told me he paid $900, and that looks about right.” He looked up hopefully. “Plus my 12 percent.” The young man closed his eyes, apparently calculating. “That’s $1,008. You could round it to an even thousand if you want.”

  “That’s fine, Eric. I’ll just give you a personal check. Will that work?”

  Barbaric’s disappointment at being undeputized faded with a sure sale in hand. “Will that work, Churchill?” The dog wheezed his assent, and Starke turned to retrieve his checkbook from the car.

  44

  At the card table in his kitchen, seated on his folding chair, Starke stared at Shelby Dwyer’s abandoned computer. As he drove away from Eric Barbaric’s house, he’d started second-guessing his decision to wait for the department’s forensics guy. A deeper dive into the contents of the keylogger device might raise questions, he knew, especially without a witness on hand. But he’d deal with that in court if he had to. To him, exploring the CarbonCopy device seemed a perfectly reasonable next step in the investigation. How else could he know if this was even a relevant piece of evidence?