Death Watch

by Elizabeth Forrest

  “Cyber-what?”

  “Imago. She uses a lot of virtual reality programming for treatment. Very cutting edge. I think there’s a good possibility she’s one reason Nelson came here.”

  Franklin made a noncommittal sound deep in his throat, and Sofer said, “Thanks. We’ll look into it.”

  Carter shrugged. “For whatever it’s worth.” He hooked a thumb through the now empty thermal coffeepot and headed to his car.

  Curious onlookers had already been discouraged away from the site. He looked down at his rear right wheel. The hubcap was missing. Stolen right out from under a fleet of L.A.’s finest. He kicked the blackwall tire in frustration before throwing the coffeepot into the back seat. He did a circuit around the vehicle. All four hubcaps had been ripped off. A crude substitute had been torn out of thin cardboard—a lid to a doughnut box, he noted with irony—and put into place on the left front. Somebody had markered “Sorry” on it.

  Carter ripped the cardboard off the wheel and sailed it vigorously into the air. It Frisbeed off across the weed and debris-ridden empty lot before disappearing. He got into his car. He started to laugh as he drove off, weaving in and out between patrol cars.

  Pete Moreno came back from an early, early unofficial break to find his phone ringing off the hook. He grabbed it up before the system could rotate it to voice mail. “Moreno here.”

  “Off-i-cer.” The voice, richly and most definitely female, hailed him. “I’m so glad to be talking to you in person. This is Joyce Tompkins.”

  That confirmed his identification of the caller. Moreno hooked his foot around his chair and drew it to him so he could sit down. “Mz. Tompkins. I’m glad to be talking to you, too. We’ve been playing phone tag. How may I be of service?” He’d been avoiding her for the last two days, but now he had no need to.

  “I’m working as an advocate for McKenzie Smith. Are you familiar with—”

  “Most definitely.”

  “Good.” Joyce took a deep breath. “Do I have to read you the riot act on this one, Officer Moreno? You’ve had this young lady practically under house arrest when you should be out looking for the proverbial estranged spouse.”

  “I’m aware of that, Mz. Tompkins. Or rather, officially, I should say that we’ve been able to develop some new information on her case that corroborates past abuse by her husband. I still haven’t been able to find witnesses who can confirm that he’s here in the area stalking her, but at least we have new leads to follow up.”

  “I’d like to make arrangements to take her out of Mount Mercy and to a safe house.”

  “What kind of safe house?”

  “Now, Pete. What kind do you think? I have a shelter which has room for her temporarily.”

  His starched shirt pulled on his armpit and he scratched it uneasily. “Mz. Tompkins, I don’t think we’d have a problem with that. Of course, we’d have to know that you were supervising, and we’d like to know where she is if we have to reach her. And I’d have to stipulate that she’s still a suspect until we can get a statement from her father. She’d have to stay in the area.”

  “Back at you, no problem here. Could I impose on you to call Mount Mercy and let them know you’ve no objection to releasing her to me?”

  “Will do.”

  “Thank you, Officer Moreno. You are, as always, a delight to talk to. How’s that diet?”

  He puffed. “It could be better.”

  “It’s going on summer. You’ll be a lot better off forgettin’ red meat and just stoking up on fresh fruit. Why don’t you try it and see if that doesn’t jump-start your day?”

  “I might just do that.”

  They exchanged one or two more pleasantries and then hung up.

  Joyce sat back in her chair and let out a big sigh of relief. The biggest hurdle to getting McKenzie Smith out of harm’s way had just been passed. In a few hours she’d be a free woman. She’d barely finished her exhalation when her beeper sounded. She pulled it off her purse. She knew the number immediately when it flashed.

  The shelter supervisor answered, voice shot with near hysteria.

  Joyce said, “Honey, calm down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. What is it?”

  “The police just called. It’s Graciela. She—she’s been murdered. Donnie, too. It’s awful, just—” the woman hiccuped. “I can’t leave the girls alone. They want somebody to come down and identify the body. I pulled her dental records from the work she had done while she was here. She—oh, God, Joyce. Who would want to kill her?”

  Joyce answered calmly, far more calmly than she felt, “What do you need me to do?”

  The woman began to sob. Joyce paused a moment and then said, “Listen, something has to be done here. Tell me what you want from me.”

  “Could you ... could you go to the coroner’s? I just can’t do it again. You know her by sight almost as well as I do.”

  This was the hard part of running a shelter. The girls left, oftentimes before they were ready, and the vindictive ex-boyfriends, spouses, had a habit of catching up. Usually they just saw them come back, just as battered as before. But every now and then, more frequently of late, the next encounter would be the last, fatal one. Joyce did not answer for a moment. She had heard Graciela was leaving. She had never thought disaster would overtake her so quickly. Her and bright-eyed, independent Donaldo. She felt her eyes quicken with tears she didn’t have time to shed.

  She heard the woman on the other end of the line take a deep, tremulous breath.

  Well, shit, Joyce thought briskly, gathering herself together. This just goes to prove you win some and you lose some. She’d gotten McKenzie out of hot water, only to lose Graciela. “Leave those charts out where I can pick them up. What time did the coroner’s office want someone there?”

  “By two o’clock. They told me there was a rush to do the autopsy. Thank you, Joyce. Thank you, thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. This is what it’s all about, girl, and you and I both work damn hard doing it. I’ll be by as soon as I can.”

  Joyce pulled out her appointment book. She wouldn’t have time to make her next meeting, free McKenzie, and then get to the morgue. McKenzie would just have to wait a little more. The girl shouldn’t mind. At least she was among the living.

  He staggered in, thought of coffee, decided against it, because the cups of last night felt like shoe polish against his teeth. The answering machine looked dim and empty and was. With a vague feeling of disappointment, he dropped on the couch, portable in hand, and called the office.

  His assignment board was still empty, though Carter knew he was free to pick up a story if anything interested him. What interested him now, he was not free to write about. Bored, he pushed buttons on the handset and went into his voice mail system.

  The voice was low, breathy, and slightly feminine, though it was definitely a man’s voice. He listened once without hearing everything that was said, then sat up straight and thumbed in the instructions to replay the message.

  He listened again, carefully. He forwarded a copy to the city desk, and coded the mail system to make a permanent record of the message. Then he set the phone down and stared at the ceiling for a long moment. He could feel the bags under his eyes, the crust at the corners of them. He could feel a vague pain in his chest, a sympathy pain for the damage the woman had taken. As he shifted, thinking, he saw a tiny smear of rust on his sleeve. He’d touched the walls somewhere, he thought, where the blood hadn’t quite dried.

  He was too old and experienced, wasn’t he, to chase wild geese?

  But what if it could make the connection with Susan Craig that he needed? What if suspicion could be countered with proof.

  He rubbed his eyes. “Aw, shit.”

  Carter went to his computer rather than to bed. He booted it up and dialed the office.

  >On-line. Good morning, Carter Wyndall.<<

  >Dolan.<<

  >Searching.<<

  Then the screen went quiet and Ca
rter waited. He waited so long that he went to sleep in the tilt back chair. The computer began to beep querulously like a watch alarm and brought him bleary-eyed back to the screen.

  >Carter. Carter, Carter, Carter, Carter.<<

  >I’m here.<<

  >Hey, you called me. What’s up?<<

  >Spent the night at a crime scene!

  >Anything we can use?<<

  >Not yet. Are you still hacking?<<

  >That’s like asking a senator if he’s still beating his wife. What have you got in mind?<<

  >I want to know what cyberImago is up to. I also want to check and see if Craig’s organization is still holding onto the Fernandina Hospital.<<

  >Why not just ask?<<

  >I don’t want to rattle her cage yet.<<

  >Okay. I’m going to make it a three-way hookup. You just hit “print screen” if you like anything you see.<<

  It had taken Dolan much diligence to make the print screen button an easy one for Carter to find and use. He typed back, >>Will do<< and sat back to let Dolan do his work.

  The first was a simple trust deed search. It only took a few minutes to find out that CyberImago still held the paper on the Fernandina Hospital. Carter sat up and stared at the screen closely, though, when Dolan pulled up the fact that the Senate Appropriations Committee had just made a similar search four weeks ago. The user posted was John Nelson. He hit the screen print button and listened as his laser printer awoke into abrupt action.

  Dolan broke off the trust deed search. >>How’d you like that one? Did I do good?<<

  >Don’t know yet. Let’s try the CyberImago offices.<<

  >I’ll get back to you.<<

  Carter laid his head back and stared at the ceiling.

  CyberImago was an anonymous office in a modest complex building. If anyone were to care to walk in, they would find a receptionist in a lobby, her desk blocking the door to the back, walls paneled in fake walnut, with a ficus growing out of its planter in the corner, steel and plastic desks, beige carpet, and little, if anything, to note what it was they did.

  The receptionist, her moon-round Asian face of Korean ancestry, sat there, intently interested in the textbooks at hand. She moved only to do her job, which was basically, simply, to answer the phones and keep anyone from entering the restricted workshops in the back. One belonged to her employer and led to her office and a small lab. The other was labeled “Research and Development” and was generally full of the most pathetic-looking dweebs she’d ever seen.

  Her hand moved to the receiver. “CyberImago.”

  “Phone company. We’re doing some work on the major trunk lines into your building today, and I have a work notice that says you have computers which have to stay on-line, modems operational.”

  She snapped to attention, flipping a strand of blue-black hair behind one ear. Losing phone lines could be disastrous. “That’s right. You can’t shut them down.”

  “Well, I might be able to reroute the lines. Can you give me the phone numbers they’re on and their access codes?”

  Jennifer Lee quickly rattled off the information. The pleasant voice thanked her and disconnected. She blinked once or twice, then ducked her chin down and returned her attention to the international business textbook in front of her.

  Dolan came back to the computer. >>I’ve got it.<<

  Carter had taken another short nap, then gotten up, fixed himself a cold drink and sat with it held to his forehead. >>Now what?<<

  >Let’s see what I can do.<<

  In the rear offices of CyberImago, movable walls divided open space into two areas. The spartan business atmosphere of the front lobby gave way to chaotic disarray. Computers and bits of computers dominated one half, printers and cables and chair pushed every which way. The other side of the room held huge cork bulletin boards, their surfaces filled with computer art of every size and persuasion. The clutter here was of an entirely different variety, diskettes and light pens, sketching paper, scanners, CAD equipment.

  The room looked as if a line had been drawn down the middle. Programmers on one side, animators on the other. Both sides were empty now, and voices could be heard from the small room off the side which doubled as a lunch and storage room.

  On the technical side of the office, a computer which had gone into screen saver rest mode, suddenly came to life. One of the programmers came out of the lunchroom, laughing, his dark hair rumpled as if he’d just run his fingers through it, glasses sliding down his nose, bright red apple in his hand. He sauntered across the work space toward a huge drink vending machine, popped in a token, and punched in his choice of cola. As the dewy-sided can dropped into the retrieval bin, the programmer paused and looked toward his area.

  He saw the computer was active. He snatched up the can, yelling, “Hey, guys, I think we got a hacker trying to break in.”

  The lunchroom emptied immediately. The first programmer already had his chair pulled up and was trying to keep the system secure. He snapped, “See if you can find out who’s logged on.”

  The second programmer sat and began to work his keyboard. The animators, who could also do this sort of work, but whose talent was that of rendering art out of the medium, watched with interest.

  The first man sat back in satisfaction. Whatever downloading had begun had been shut off. “Got ’em,” he announced.

  “Me, too.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It looks like the newspaper’s ID. Let me verify that....” He dialed out a number on his own, the modem responded with its atonal sounds, and the newspaper flashed its on-line symbol.

  “Verrry interesting. Dr. Craig will want to know this.” He checked his watch. “Hey. Ten more minutes for lunch.” He picked up his apple and his cola and sauntered back to the lunchroom.

  The other three fellows joined him where they sat and speculated if the break-in had been deliberate or accidental and, if deliberate, what the paper could have been trying to do.

  Dolan came back on-line. >>They’re good. They shut me down almost immediately.<<

  >Get anything? <<

  >I think I got a download on one of the programs they’re developing. Let me take a look at it and I’ll get back to you later.<<

  >You know where to find me.<< Carter signed off. He rubbed the cold water glass over his forehead again, thinking, hurry up and wait . The bedroom looked inviting. He got up and lumbered in that direction.

  After lunch, the head programmer opened the door to the lobby and stuck his head through, startling Jennifer Lee, who rarely saw any of them once they passed through the portal.

  “Hey, Jen. Give the boss a call and tell her we had someone try to break into the system.”

  “A hacker?”

  “Maybe. Could just have been a wrong number, too.”

  She was already reaching for the phone. “Do you know who it was?”

  “Yeah, we picked up a user number. It was the newspaper.”

  “The newspaper?”

  “Yeah. Probably thought we were AP or something. But Dr. Craig might want to know. She always says there are no coincidences.”

  “Right,” Jennifer answered dryly, familiar with her employer’s perfectionism. The programmer popped his head back into the workshop, rather like a chipmunk going back into its hole. She telephoned the hospital, going directly into Susan Craig’s private mailbox to leave word, knowing that the doctor rarely liked to be interrupted at the lab during work hours. That done, her attention once again returned to her study.

  Chapter 29

  In the wee small hours of the morning, Jack discovered that the hospital stirred with a life all its own. He had found shelter more or less in the fourth floor chapel, leaving it only when other people came in, which happened rarely and only for moments. Even the chaplain had yet to stop by. Jack put his feet up on the richly-grained oak pew, finished the cafeteria turpentine that passed for coffee, and decided on his plans for the day. The wardens at the reception desk for the Psych ward change
d often. Often enough that the old cow with the pleasant expression on her face who sat there now wouldn’t recognize him. Couldn’t tell him from Carter Wyndall from a hole in the ground.

  He picked a coffee ground from between his teeth. A little too early to visit Mac. Even on a good day, McKenzie was hardly what one would call a morning person, and she’d scarcely had a lot of what Jack would call good days lately. No. Later in the day would suit him just fine. After lunch, maybe, when visitors flowed in and out of the hospital like trash carried on a gol-darn flood tide. That way, if anyone was looking for him, if anyone gave chase, he could disappear a little easier.

  Not that the police knew a damn thing yet. He slurped the last of his bitter coffee from the paper cup and then crumpled it viciously in his hand. The police might as well have their heads up their asses. They weren’t even making a good game out of this.