Cold Case nfe-15 Read online

  “Father Flannery knows I’m with the Net Force Explorers,” Matt began. “I pulled a few strings on our behalf.”

  “Net Force is tracking down whoever’s behind this?”

  Hating to kill the fragile look of hope shining on Suze Kellerman’s face, Matt gently said, “I’ve tried to bring them in, but as far as Net Force is concerned, there’s no actual evidence of any Net crime committed.” He glanced at Jones. “I did talk to an agent — which you can verify—”

  “Count on it,” Jones bluntly replied.

  “Anyway, he got an advance look at the report from the fire investigators.” Matt went on to pass on what Winters had told him.

  “Wait a minute!” Father Flannery protested. “We both saw those lamps — if you can call it seeing, considering the dim light they threw. No way on earth could either of them have been burning the bulb you’re talking about.”

  “Just as I said to the Net Force agent.” Matt tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I’ll pass along the answers he gave me, which he got from the fire investigators — a replacement bulb, a mistake—”

  “Could he have had the lights dim on purpose that day?” Suze suggested. “Maybe he was hiding his face—”

  Matt shook his head. “Not likely. Derbent had no idea we were coming—” He broke off. “Unless one of you contacted him while we were on the way.”

  The college kids shook their heads. “Kerry told me about your visit when I came out of class — that’s across campus from our dorm.”

  Jones nodded. “I beat feet over there as soon as you guys left.”

  “Besides, we saw Derbent’s face clearly,” Flannery put in. “When he answered the door, he stood in the sunshine. You can’t call that hiding.”

  “Speaking of hiding — or at least, of information a person wouldn’t like to get out — one of our detective colleagues had a past.” Matt hadn’t been sure how he’d handle the information about Harry Knox. Now he made up his mind — full disclosure.

  When he finished, Suze Kellerman blinked in bafflement. “Then, Krantz — I mean, Knox — was the hacker. But he’s dead. So why are we still getting complaints about hacking?” She pulled out a piece of paper that was all too familiar — a virtual copy of the letter Matt had received that afternoon.

  From the way Father Flannery reacted, he’d received the same sort of mail. The priest gave them a sour smile. “If this were a mystery story, the villain would have knocked off Saunders to keep him from exposing his identity along with everyone else’s. Knox, because of his own hacker background, would have somehow realized who the hacker was and be trying to blackmail.”

  “Nice theory.” Jones barely kept the sneer out of his voice. “But it doesn’t explain what happened to Derbent, does it?”

  “Have you got a better explanation?” Matt challenged.

  The college guy was definitely wearing his game face as he scowled at Matt and Flannery. “There are two choices here. Either the things that have happened really are all accidents, or somebody’s making them happen.” Jones took Suze Kellerman’s hand. “If they aren’t accidents, from what I see, that means one of you two is a killer.”

  For a second Matt glanced at Father Flannery. The priest was outraged. Then Matt swung back to look at Jones. You know what they say, he thought. The best defense is a strong offense.

  Suze unexpectedly broke the standoff. “I don’t know what is going on here,” she confessed, her voice shaking. “Coincidence, or — whatever.”

  Then she began to cry. “I–I just want it to stop!”

  Matt silently watched as Jones folded his arms around Suze, trying to comfort her. Father Flannery’s face was a little pinker — obviously, he empathized with the girl.

  If that’s acting, she has some major awards in her future, Matt thought.

  Kerry Jones had some tissues out and was trying to coax Suze back to calmness. Right now, he didn’t look like someone who could pull off a string of cold-blooded “accidents” to hide his guilt.

  Jones was right about one thing. The circle of suspects kept shrinking and shrinking. And none of the people left struck Matt as likely cold-blooded, efficient killers. What did that leave them with, then? A nasty set of coincidences heightened by paranoia and scary letters from lawyers?

  Matt shook his head as if a tiny buzzing insect were trapped in his ear. No! There was a hacker — or, perhaps, there had been one among the sim participants.

  Still sniffling, Suze took her boyfriend’s hand. Jones glared furiously at Matt as the two of them disappeared.

  Father Flannery spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness and cut his connection, too.

  Alone, Matt felt his lips curve in an ironic smile.

  The Callivant lawyers shouldn’t waste their time badgering us to find out who the hacker is, he thought. They should just wait to nail the last of us who is still standing!

  13

  The lobby wasn’t exactly bustling. But there were enough people walking past Matt to the visitors’ desk, getting oversized passes, and boarding the elevators for the floors above.

  Matt, however, had nowhere to go. The hospital clerk had just turned down his request for a pass. After all my research, Matt thought, that’s one bit I never thought to check.

  He’d spent every free moment in school today working the Bradford Academy computer system, trying to get more information about the fire that had burnt out Oswald Derbent’s home. Along the way, he’d picked up the fact that Derbent had been brought to the burn unit at George Washington University Hospital.

  So, when classes ended, instead of going home, he headed in the opposite direction, south and east to Foggy Bottom. Here was the hospital, there was the visitor’s desk — but passes were only for family members.

  You should have thought of that, Matt accused himself. Derbent’s situation is worse than critical.

  He wanted to do something, not just head back with his tail between his legs. But a get-well balloon or flowers seemed like a pretty empty gesture.

  The last thing Matt expected was a hand on his shoulder. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he whipped around to see Father Flannery.

  “I thought it was you,” the priest said.

  “My school isn’t all that far away.” Matt shrugged, feeling awkward. “When I learned that Mr. Derbent was here — I thought maybe I could visit him. But they wouldn’t let me in.”

  Flannery nodded. “My collar cut no ice with them, either. But they gave me some information.”

  He sighed. “Derbent is in one of the hyperbaric oxygen modules — that’s the best hope, given the severity of his burns. If they can keep his condition stabilized long enough, they’ll try for synthetic skin grafts. But they aren’t optimistic.”

  Matt nodded. Derbent wasn’t a big man, and he was no kid.

  “There’s a small chapel.” Flannery nodded off to one side. “I was in there praying for him.” The priest hesitated, then went on. “Before that, I was visiting with Mrs. Knox.”

  “Those — both — were kind things to do,” Matt said.

  “As we said before, they come with the job.” Flannery looked embarrassed. “The poor woman is a wreck. She has no idea whether her husband was keeping up his insurance, and there’s still no money coming in. There are children to be fed, and a roof to be kept over their heads—” The priest shook his head. “I gave her some advice, suggested some places she could go. She was almost pathetically grateful. She talked a great deal — I suppose she was glad to have a friendly car.”

  He grimaced. “But it seems I haven’t quite shaken off the influence of Spike Spanner. I asked some questions, too.”

  Matt sighed. “And did you dig up any clues?”

  “I suppose you’d call it something more like background information. It seems Hard-Knocks Harry was a bit of a dreamer,” Father Flannery said. “He talked big, but never accomplished anything.”

  “He wound up with that big rig.”

&n
bsp; “Financed with a legacy from his uncle,” Flannery said. “When he wasn’t on the road, he was synched into his computer. After his juvenile brush with the law, Knox apparently fancied himself as quite the outlaw. He liked sims about hacking. He and the missus apparently had some arguments about it. She didn’t want him leading the children astray.”

  “So he decided to be a great detective instead?” Matt asked.

  The priest nodded. “But that wasn’t the kind of reform Mrs. Knox had in mind. She’s a bit of a technophobe. Computers give her the creeps. She complained about her husband lying around, connected to what she called a ‘soulless machine.’”

  “Maybe she had a point,” Matt suggested.

  “If she went too far in one direction, Knox went too far in the other. He was determined to solve the fictional Van Alst case. In fact, he hinted that it might lead to real-life benefits.”

  Matt paused for a second. “The hacking.”

  “The widow Knox doesn’t know about that,” Flannery said, “and I didn’t tell her. But it sounds like he may have been behind it.”

  “Well, we’ll certainly never find out.” Matt shrugged.

  Now it was the priest’s turn to pause.

  “We might,” said Father Flannery. “The arguments over Hard-Knocks Harry’s virtual life ended with his wife throwing him out of the house.” He glanced at Matt. “She also disconnected his computer.”

  Matt stared. “What?”

  “She had some muddled fears that he’d fool with financial records, cut her out of bank accounts or something. That way, she figured she’d have an untouched version of their accounts.” Flannery smiled at the expression on Matt’s face. “I told you, she’s not the most sophisticated person when it comes to computers.”

  “Sophisticated?” Matt echoed. “You’d have to work pretty hard to be that ignorant. Didn’t she ever learn in school—”

  “It was a different era,” Flannery said. “A good school was one that had one computer per classroom.”

  Matt silently shook his head.

  “Anyway,” the priest went on, “Mrs. Knox asked me where she could get help sorting out what’s in her former husband’s computer. Family accounts, records—”

  And maybe a few terabits of contraband information about a certain incident in Haddington, Matt silently finished. “Did you look?” he asked.

  The priest shook his head, looking a little more uncomfortable. “I honestly told her that I’m not all that technically inclined.” He hesitated, finally going on. “Then, I may have bent the truth a little. I reminded the widow of my first visit, with you, building you up as quite the computer wiz. Mrs. Knox is very eager to meet you again — for your professional opinion. Can you handle that?”

  Matt smiled. “If I can’t, I’ll be sure to bring along someone who can.”

  As soon as Matt got home, he put out a call to his Net Force Explorers crew, inviting them in for a virtual meeting that evening. After dinner he whipped through his homework, then leaned back on his computer-link couch and synched in.

  Matt entered his virtual work space, a black marble “desktop” floating unsupported in the midst of a starry sky.

  One nice thing about veeyar, he thought, suddenly remembering Kerry Jones’s dorm room. You don’t have to tidy it up when you have company.

  Leif Anderson popped into existence on the other side of the desktop. “This is a nice setup,” he said, folding his legs so that he was floating in a modified lotus position. He glanced down toward a distant galaxy. “Must be hard on people with acrophobia, though.”

  “I have a special sim for those visitors — it’s a precise re-creation of the inside of my closet.” Before Matt could say anything else, Megan was beside him. She ignored the stars, checking out the icons arranged on the desktop to spot any new programs she might want to borrow.

  Megan was telling him he ought to upgrade his virtmail system when David Gray appeared.

  “You’re late!” She delighted in announcing to the usually punctual David. “That burn leg of yours is slowing you up even in veeyar!”

  “It’s not the burn leg, but the cane.” David made an annoyed noise. “Especially when you have two younger brothers playing with it. I was stranded at the dinner table until my mother restored order.”

  Andy Moore appeared after that story, so he had no comments. And, since he was always late, nobody had a comment about that.

  Matt waited until everyone was comfortably seated or sprawled in midair, then started talking. “Last night,” he finished. “I had a meeting with the people — the few who are left of them — from the mystery sim I told you about. I wanted to get them up to date on some stuff I had learned, to keep the flow of information going.”

  “Better watch out with that line,” Andy warned. “It sounds like the old hackers’ motto: “Information must be free!”

  Ignoring the comment, Matt went on, “I thought maybe we should do the same — you know, share information. If I run over stuff you’ve heard before, I apologize. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

  His friends listened quietly while he summarized the case, paying special attention to what Captain Winters had said about the arson investigation, and what the sim participants had said when they’d gotten together.

  “I’ve also got a piece of new business.” Matt then recounted his meeting with Father Flannery, going on to cover the Widow Knox and her disconnected computer.

  “If she just unplugged it, she probably screwed up the operating system,” Andy said. “Any flash memory would certainly be gone.”

  “But the long-term memory files should survive.” As Matt hoped, David’s eyes had a techie’s gleam. The idea of reconstructing someone else’s computer appealed to him.

  “The widow is hoping for financial statements and family records,” Matt said.

  Andy snorted. “Which anybody with half a brain could get off the Net.”

  Matt leaned forward. “Knox was thrown out of the house. He didn’t expect that. So there may be other stuff tucked away in the computer’s fixed memory.”

  “You mean if he’s the hacker who started all the trouble,” Leif said.

  “But the lawyers are still all over you and your simmates for hacking,” Megan pointed out. “To me, that sounds like the hacking is still ongoing. So how can he be the hacker?”

  “What?” Andy asked. “You think there’s more than one?”

  “I have no idea anymore,” Matt admitted. “But I’ve got a chance to look in this guy’s system legally—”

  “Which is more than anybody else would give you,” Andy cracked.

  “And I’ve got the communications code for the Widow Knox and could give her a call. I could use some help.” Matt turned to David. “That is, if you’re willing to lend your technical expertise.”

  “We’ll have to get at the computer physically,” David said. “Maybe Saturday—”

  “In the afternoon,” Megan broke in. “I have a judo class in the morning.”

  Matt glanced at her.

  “Oh, I’m going,” she said before he could say anything. “This is something I want to see.”

  That was more help than Matt had counted on, but he saw he’d never win an argument with Megan. So he shrugged and said, “Okay. I’ll make the call and see what happens. Does anyone have anything to add? Is there anything we’re missing?”

  Andy pointed to Matt’s desktop. “You’re missing a call right now.”

  The tiny, sculptured ear that represented Matt’s virtmail account was flashing with an urgent intensity.

  “Not a call,” Matt said. “A message.” He reached down and activated the program. The display that popped into view was framed in flames — a visual metaphor for hot news.

  Megan, typically, craned her head so she could read over Matt’s shoulder. “Who’s Dave Lowen?” she asked, frowning. “The name sounds familiar—”

  “He’s a character in the Lucullus Marten
stories.” Matt’s frown was even deeper as he looked at the sender’s name. “Marten uses the guy if Monty Newman is busy, or if the job requires a special finesse.”

  Megan gave a bark of laughter. “The message is addressed to Monty Newman. Whoever it is mustn’t know you’ve retired.”

  “Oh, I think they know, all right,” Matt said as he read the rest of the message.

  Even Lucullus Marten never tried to solve a forty-year-old mystery. Here are a few points you might want to consider:

  Who was the first officer on the scene?

  How long did it take for Walter G. to be questioned?

  When was his car impounded?

  What happened to the car?

  “I can tell you the answer to number one,” Megan said. “So can Leif.”

  Leif nodded. “The cop was Clyde Finch, who went on to become head of the Callivants’ personal security — and thanks to his seventeen-year-old daughter, also became Nikki Callivant’s great-grandfather.”

  “Sounds like he could have done a better security job on his darling daughter,” Andy cackled.

  “Looking past that…you really have to question the guy’s capacity for the job,” David said. “The world is full of Secret Service and FBI alumni who would kill for a gig like guarding the Callivants. How does it wind up going to a small-town—”

  “Flatfoot?” Andy suggested, earning a dirty look from the cop’s son.

  “I think we agree that Mr. Finch should be looked into,” Matt said hurriedly. He glanced at Leif, who shrugged.

  “I’ll take a crack at it,” he promised. “And I think I know the answer to the second question. From what I’ve read, Walter G. Callivant wasn’t questioned until three days after the body was discovered. He’d suffered some sort of collapse and was in a sanitarium.”

  “Convenient,” David snorted. “I bet the cops really took the gloves off — a rich kid surrounded by a phalanx of shrinks.”

  “Not to mention lawyers,” Andy said.

  “How about the next question?” Megan put in. “When did the cops get their hands on Walter G.’s car?”