Something was clearly wiggly-whack.
“Can you fix that mess?” Jo asked, because the text wasn’t anything readable. It was just random characters, one after another, for paragraphs.
Bridget laughed, but she sounded more frustrated than amused. “No, I can’t do anything about it.”
“But it’s nothing more than gibberish.” Jo’s heart crumpled in her chest. “Did the virus corrupt her e-mail files?”
“No.” The young woman pushed back her keyboard, twirling in her chair to face them. “The text is encrypted. Without the key, I can’t read the body of the e-mail, just the sender’s e-mail address and the subject. Sometimes the program keeps the plain text once the e-mail’s been read. But this one appears to stay in ciphertext when the program’s closed out.”
“It’s encrypted?” Hank repeated.
“Yes, the e-mail program scrambles all the bits around to protect the contents,” Bridget started to explain, “and only the sender and recipient have the key so they can—”
“I actually know what it means,” Hank said, interrupting. “I just can’t imagine why a couple of high school kids would need to use coded e-mails to send messages.”
Jo gave him a look. “I could,” she remarked, especially if Kelly had been raped at Trey’s party, and Trey was trying to cover it up.
“You think a fifteen-year-old girl would subscribe to an encryption service? It doesn’t feel right,” Hank said.
“Maybe it wasn’t her idea. Maybe it was Gucci Boy’s.”
“Gucci Boy?” Hank repeated, and then his eyebrows arched.
Jo tapped a finger lightly against the monitor in the middle, where Bridget had highlighted the sender’s e-mail address. “Username ‘Stang12,’” she said.
Hank whistled. “Well, would you look at that? At this rate, the boy’s not gonna be playing for the Longhorns next year. He’s going to be lucky if he gets signed by the University of Leavenworth.”
“So you know who it is?” Bridget asked, blinking dark eyes behind her thick glasses.
“We can make an educated guess,” Jo told her.
Namely, that it was the golden arm of the Plainfield Mustangs football team, who wore a number twelve on his jersey and whose daddy owned a software security company. Jo wondered if that company offered e-mail encryption.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Hank said.
Jo nodded. “Trey Eldon.”
“Should I look into this guy’s social media presence, too?” Bridget piped up.
“Please do,” Jo told her. “His legal name is Robert Eldon the Third, but he goes by Trey. If we’re lucky, he posted pics or video from his end-of-summer-break party. That would help us start identifying who else was there.”
“That should be simple enough if he tagged them.”
Jo thanked her, and Bridget promised to begin a methodical search through Kelly’s electronic files, just to be sure they didn’t miss a beat. Within seconds, the young woman had her headphones back on, and her fingers resumed their staccato dance across her keyboard, effectively tuning them out.
“I hope she gives us a hammer to nail that son of a bitch to the wall,” Hank said too loudly as they left Bridget’s quarters, emerging into the much quieter hallway.
“I can hear you,” Jo said, and he tugged at his ears, like he was trying to clear them.
“Sorry,” he said, lowering his voice.
“You think he’s guilty?”
“Of something, yeah. He’s sure acting like a guy who has a dirty little secret.”
“If we can just get him to hand over the code for the encryption, we’d know what was going on between him and Kelly . . .”
Hank snorted. “They’re not going to make it that easy. We can try, but my gut’s screaming warrant.”
“If he’s as innocent as he claims, those e-mails could exonerate him.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to see how helpful he is, then, won’t we?”
There was so much they still didn’t know about Kelly and Trey and what had gone on at that party. The sooner they figured it out, the sooner Kelly could rest in peace, and wasn’t that what everyone claimed to want?
Jo thought of Cassie and of her parting shot about dropping the investigation, and a lightbulb went on in her tired brain.
“Maybe we can force his hand,” she remarked, as much to herself as her partner. “Cassie Marks said Kelly had evidence she was holding over someone’s head. Photos, a video, she didn’t know for sure.” Jo shook her head. “But I’ll bet that someone was Trey. So we just have to find it.”
“It being what, exactly?”
“The proof,” she said. “It’s out there.” Why else would Kelly have suggested it to Cassie?
Hank smirked. “Okay, and where exactly is that proof hiding, Agent Scully? In Area Fifty-One, perhaps?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
But she had a few thoughts on where to look.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jo didn’t like to walk away from her desk when there was unfinished business, but she made herself leave when her shift ended. She’d be no good to anybody if she didn’t take a step back now and then. Besides, she wanted a good meal, not vending-machine crap, and some time alone with Adam. And before she could do either, she had an unwanted detour to make to the psych ward at Presbyterian Hospital, where the nursing home had sent her errant mother.
She told herself she was at a good stopping point, anyway.
Officer Ramsey had retrieved the dog collar and tags from Jill Burns to try to print them as well as the tags from Amanda Pearson. Jo had filed property theft reports for both missing dogs. She’d left a message with Barbara Amster about getting back out to the house to search Kelly’s room, and she’d left a voice mail for Robert Eldon, formally requesting that Trey voluntarily give them a list of party guests. She also asked that Trey turn over the unencrypted e-mails between him and Kelly Amster.
If he didn’t agree, they could pursue a warrant to force his hand. But Jo hoped the Eldons would comply and not get a high-priced lawyer involved to muddy the waters and speed bump their search for answers about what had led to Kelly Amster’s death.
Before she took off, Jo poked her head into Bridget’s office space but found only the department’s server equipment, noisily whirring away.
So she headed out with Hank, listening to him bitch about the heat as he rolled up his sleeves. She didn’t tell him where she was going, and he didn’t ask. With a wave and a “See you in the morning, partner,” she crossed the lot to her Mustang, keyed it open, and slipped inside.
Jo cranked up the air, waiting for it to cool down as she texted Ronnie that she was going to see Mama. Then she tossed her phone on the passenger’s seat and turned on the radio. She had installed a police band in the car but left it off. Dispatch could reach her by cell, and she wanted the radio on. Switching on the classical music station, she sighed happily as Mozart’s Serenade No. 13 flowed from the speakers. She felt the tension ease from her shoulders, and she tapped a beat on the steering wheel as she slipped out of the rear lot.
She hated driving into the city at rush hour, but she had no choice. So she kept the music on and let her thoughts slide around to Kelly Amster’s alleged suicide and what was behind it, to Mama and her Alzheimer’s and all the paperwork Jo was slowly trying to unscramble after the sale of the house, and to Amanda Pearson and Jill Burns and what they were going through tonight, wondering about their missing “kids.”
Serenade No. 13 segued into Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, a rather strident piece that wasn’t one of her favorites, but she merely turned it down a notch. She didn’t switch stations, didn’t budge from her music. She didn’t want to check talk radio for the latest news. She found nothing more depressing these days than crime and politics and natural disasters, and those seemed to dominate every broadcast.
Though the sun had settled low on the horizon, the sky was still fairly bright. The clouds
had just begun to reflect a pink tinge when Jo exited I-635 for Walnut Hill Lane.
She didn’t have far to go to reach the hospital. Once she’d parked in the garage, she took a deep breath, catching sight of her eyes in the rearview mirror. They looked so dark and serious, the pupil barely discernible from the iris beneath the dim garage lighting. They were so different from her mother’s pale eyes. Jo’s hair was dark, too, nearly black and full of unruly waves, whereas Verna’s had always been straw yellow and straight.
Her eyes and her hair, and so many other things about her that didn’t jibe with any characteristics of Mama, those were gifts from her father, she surmised; the man who’d left her to Verna all those years ago, before she’d really even known him. From what Mama had told her, and there had been much bad-mouthing, he’d walked away and found himself a new family, like Kelly Amster’s father, who forgot to call on birthdays.
Jo wondered if Kelly’s dad had been told of her death, and she wondered, too—although more fleetingly—if her own father knew that she was alive. Did he care?
Why did it still seem to matter so much?
Jo cursed under her breath. She got out of the car and walked into the building, brushing past the tide of others leaving. But the tower that housed the psychiatric wing seemed mostly deserted, and the elevator was empty going up.
When she hit the floor with the psych ward, she had to identify herself and whom she’d come to see before they would buzz her inside.
The lighting seemed dimmer within. She heard a TV and spied a lounge of sorts where family members sat, visiting with patients. No one took notice as she passed.
A pair of nurses—one male and one female—dressed in navy-blue scrubs looked up from beyond a countertop as she paused, unsure of where to go.
“I’m here to see Verna Kaufman,” she said, and the pair exchanged glances before the male nurse came around to where she stood. “I’m her daughter, Jo Larsen.”
“I’m Dimitri, the head nurse,” he said, giving her a half smile.
He had his name sewn onto his shirt in simple white letters, easier to read than a name on a badge, and no dangerous pin held it on.
Though he was middle-aged, his hair faded to gray, he was in good shape with muscular arms sticking out of his short sleeves. The strange yellow lighting gave his skin the faintest tinge of green.
“How’s she doing?” Jo asked. “Can I see her?”
“Your mother’s actually sleeping now, which is a good thing. She hasn’t eaten today, and she’s been very agitated. She’s understandably confused about where she is and what she’s doing here.”
“I’ll bet she is.”
“She shouldn’t be here,” he said, glancing over her shoulder as a gowned patient walked by, the other nurse intercepting him. “We don’t have room to house Alzheimer’s patients. The memory care facilities should know better than to drop them off here.” He was well spoken, with a discernible Eastern European accent, which made him sound all the angrier. “They should have a psychiatrist on staff for things like this. It’s ridiculous.”
“Where is she?” Jo asked, looking down the hallway at a dozen doors. “Maybe I could tiptoe in and take a peek.”
“I’d rather you not wake her,” he said. “Can you come back tomorrow?”
Jo didn’t want to be there now, much less come back.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “It’s just that I don’t live in town, and I see her so rarely . . .”
He put up a hand. “You don’t have to explain. Your aunt was here. She said you’re a police detective. You probably have lots of crooks to catch.”
Her aunt? Jo started to say that she didn’t have an aunt but caught herself.
Ronnie, Jo realized. He meant Ronnie.
Which made her remember something else.
“I forgot to bring her a toothbrush,” she said, something she’d told Ronnie she’d do if she got here.
Dimitri grinned. “I can dig up one of those. No worries. Your mother needs sleep more than to brush her teeth, anyway.”
Jo nodded, and he practically shooed her out the door. It clanked closed behind her, like it was made of some thick metal so the inmates couldn’t escape.
She paused in the hallway only long enough to send a text to Ronnie:
Mama’s asleep. Saw nurse who will get her a toothbrush. Heading home.
As she pressed the down button for the elevator, her phone pinged.
Thx, hon, Ronnie had typed. I will go in the morning.
She went down in the elevator alone and walked to her car in the green glow of the subterranean parking.
As usual, once she left her mother, she felt an overwhelming sense of guilt—for not always doing what she should, for not insisting on seeing Mama and sitting with her, holding her hand or whatever good daughters did for mothers who deserved such attention far more than Verna did. She didn’t remind herself of the things her mother should have done for her, long before the Alzheimer’s became her sole excuse. She didn’t push back against the sense that it was all her fault. She just left it there to simmer for a while, holding her hostage and making it hard to breathe until it slowly released her.
By the time she reached Plainfield, after about forty-five minutes on the crowded tollway, the guilt was gone, replaced by hunger and an ache to see Adam and Ernie.
She had begun to realize clearly that the pain of her past would never go away, but the more she loved and felt loved, the less she grieved.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was twilight when she reached her condo.
She spotted Adam’s Jeep right away, and she slid her Mustang in beside it. Jo could tell that he’d turned on the living room light, though the blinds were drawn. Thin strips of yellow escaped between the wooden slats.
Before she stuck her key in the lock, she reached into the black mailbox on the porch railing and found it empty. Adam must have taken the mail inside, as he’d done often enough before when he’d beaten her home. It amazed her, how such a small action left her feeling taken care of, like finding the fridge full during a busy week—albeit with lots of health food, not the junk she was used to eating. Having Adam in her life definitely had its perks.
She got the door open in a hurry and stamped her feet on the inside mat. The noise was enough to draw Ernie, who raced toward her from across the living room, his slim, black body a mere streak, like a shadow.
“Hey, baby,” she said, as the cat skidded to a stop just before he ran into her shins. Then he wended his way between her ankles as she slung her bag on the console table and dropped her keys.
He purred as she crouched down beside him.
“How’re you doing?” she asked, her heart warmed by his greeting.
She thought of Jill Burns and Amanda Pearson, and her smile slipped. How lonely they must feel tonight without their close companions.
She scratched the cat beneath his chin until his eyes closed and he flopped over at her feet. “I think you missed me,” she said, and her grin was back. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
After a day that had left her emotionally drained, she welcomed Ernie’s unbridled affection. When she’d rescued him six months ago during a case, she’d never imagined that so small a being could loom so large in her life.
She picked him up, hugging him against her chest, stroking him between his ears and trying not to think about work, about death and loss and things beyond her control.
Let it go, she told herself. At least for now.
She cradled the cat, rubbing his belly as she went in search of Adam.
It wasn’t hard to find him in a condo that was less than a thousand square feet. All she had to do was listen. He was humming tunelessly, something that was probably old Van Halen or AC/DC. He was a glutton for eighties rock, because he said it was like him, like what he did: trying to make sense of shit that was pretty much nonsensical.
“Lucy, I’m home,” she said, doing her best Ricky Ricardo impression.
He turned his head enough to give her a grin that looked boyish, despite the salt-and-pepper hair and stubble. He was standing in the kitchen, parked in front of the stovetop in clean green scrubs. His slender feet were bare. She could hear the sizzle of something cooking, and whatever it was smelled divine.
“Great timing,” he said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
She set Ernie down so she could come up behind him and slip her arms around his waist. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “What’s cooking? Beef Wellington? Baked Alaska? Coq au vin?”
“Very funny,” he said, leaning his head back to touch hers. “I’m no Julia Child, but I can make a mean bacon and eggs.”
“You also make a mean peanut butter and jelly,” she teased, giving his butt a pat through his scrubs. The back of his hair was still damp from a recent shower. She ran her fingers up into the curls that were only half-dry. “How’d your day go?”
“Never a dull moment,” he said, not coughing up any details. “There’s too much work. That’s the problem with it. Never stops.”
“I know.”
“Yeah, you do, don’t you?”
She thought he might say something about Kelly Amster, about who’d been assigned her postmortem, but he didn’t. Maybe he was waiting for her to bring up the case first. Jo wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. She wanted to pretend her life was normal, even if that lasted only through mealtime.
She went to the cabinet over the sink and pulled out two dinner plates. Then she got a saucer for Ernie. He was a big fan of Adam’s scrambled eggs—heck, he would eat just about anything, from tuna fish to spaghetti—and he sat patiently nearby, waiting for his dinner to be served.
She went to the fridge and found a lone tomato. She sliced it up, adding it to their plates as Adam shoveled fluffy eggs atop them.
Ernie let out a meow, and Adam laughed. “Hold your horses, buddy. I’ve got yours here,” he said, chopping up the eggs into small pieces before Jo put the dish on the floor.
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