Russell Andrews - Hades

"Ben, can you get the info to me now?"

"Yeah, that's why I was calling. I just e-mailed it. I wanted to let you know it was there 'cause it sounded kind of important."

"It is."

"And I'll get my TV, right?" the kid asked.

"I'll even pay for the delivery charge," Justin told him. Then, eyeing the gadget sitting on his desk, the one he'd taken from Belinda Lambert's apartment the night before, he said, "Ben, let me ask you something. I think I've got another job for you."

"Cool," Ben said. "I can use a DVD recorder. U.S. and European capabilities."

"Name your brand."

"Wow, this is great."

"Yeah, great. Listen. I've got a BlackBerry here. It's a secretary's, but her boss had it configured so all his corporate info automatically shows up on it. Can you come here and take a look at it? I might need you to recover some information."

"Well, if she's attached to his system, I can hack it."

"How about coming over now?"

"Gee, I can't now. I gotta get goin'."

"Where you going so early?" Justin looked at his watch. It was still a few minutes before seven-thirty. "What are you even doing up so early? Shouldn't you be staying out all night and sleeping till noon?"

"I got summer school," Ben said.

"Summer school?" Justin said.

"I had to pull my grades up, you know."

"Your grades? How the hell can you get bad grades? Ben, you're a goddamn genius."

"Yeah," Ben Jenkins said, "but my grades still stink."

"How is that possible?"

"My mom says I watch too much TV. Listen, I gotta go, okay, Chief?"

"Ben… I think we're talking about you skipping summer school today."

"I don't know. My mom gets pretty pissed off about stuff like that."

"I'll talk to her. Is she awake?"

"Yeah. She never sleeps. She gets up at like five every morning."

"Let me talk to her, okay?"

Ben put his mother on the phone, and Justin explained to her what he needed her son to do. He said it was very important. And he told her he'd talk to Ben's teacher and explain everything to her, so Ben wouldn't get penalized for missing any work. The clincher was that he told her Ben wouldn't just be working with the police department, he'd be helping the FBI.

"Honest to goodness?" she asked. "The FBI?"

He swore on his life and Mrs. Jenkins agreed. She said she'd drive him over in a few minutes. Justin then spoke to Ben again, told him precisely what he wanted him to do so if he was going to need any special tools or connectors he could bring them with him.

As soon as Ben hung up, Justin went to his computer. When he went on AOL, the lead news story was: black widow admits to affairs but not murder. Justin said, "Fuck me," and then signed on to his mailbox.

Sure enough, Ben's e-mail was waiting for him. He opened it, briefly scanned the info on the screen, then printed it. Two copies. He started to dial Reggie on his cell phone as he waited for the pages to print, but before he could finish dialing, there was a knock at the door. When he opened it, Reggie was standing on his doorstep. She was holding a newspaper, but as she peered inside his living room, she saw his papers scattered on the floor.

"I see you're already up on your current events," she said.

He told her to shut up and come in.

Reggie's mouth was open wide as she studied the info that Justin had printed. She stared over at Ben, who had arrived a few minutes after she had, and was busy clacking away at the keyboard of Justin's computer.

"You are a genius," she said.

"You owe him a hundred bucks," Justin told her, "and me fifty."

"You mind if I wait till payday?" she asked Ben.

"When is that?" Ben asked.

"Friday," she said.

The teenager looked at Justin, who nodded.

"Should be all right," Justin said. "But if you want, I'll pay you and she can pay me back. With interest."

"Nah," Ben said. "That's okay. I can wait." And he went back to searching through Belinda Lambert's BlackBerry, which he'd hooked up to Justin's computer.

"This is unbelievable," Reggie said quietly. "He got us everything we need."

"So let me get your take."

"Why don't we go through it separately? So we get separate takes. Then we can merge what we each come up with."

Justin agreed and they spent the hour or so-Justin on the couch, Reggie with one leg tucked under her as she nestled in the easy chair, as Ben worked, silently engrossed, sitting at Justin's desk-trying to organize the new mass of information. When they were done, they compared their lists and the connections they'd come up with. They winnowed out anything they both agreed was irrelevant-companies that didn't seem to have any possible connection to the investigation, names that popped up that also were removed from any personal or business dealings that might connect to the murders-but if one disagreed, the information stayed in. Then they merged everything they had onto a master list.

Justin turned to Ben. "How much longer you gonna be?" he asked.

"I'm done. I was just kinda listenin' to you guys. That's how you work, huh? Pretty cool."

"Were you able to get into St. John's computer?"

"Nope. Rockworth's security's good, much better than Ascension. They got a serious system."

"So nothing, huh?"

"Not exactly nothing. I mean, I couldn't get into any of the financial stuff, like I did with Ascension. I think I could if I had more time, but I don't think it'll do any good. At least for the guy you want. I don't think this guy St. John is still in the system. I think all his info's been wiped out. Once I downloaded all of this chick's stuff"-he nodded at Belinda Lambert's BlackBerry-"I could do a basic hack and get into his Outlook. But there's nothin' there."

"E-mails?"

"Gone. And I can't find 'em without having access to his hard drive. I can't recover that from outside."

"Did he have a calendar in the system? Maybe an address book?"

"Yeah. But someone wiped it, too."

"You're sure?"

"Definitely. A few days ago."

"So you can't retrieve any of it?"

"I didn't have to."

"I'm afraid you did. It's pretty important."

"No," Ben said. "That's not what I mean. I didn't have to. It's like you said-everything on his system was automatically carried over onto this Belinda person's computer. I looked at some of her stuff, too, and man, did she have some crazy e-mails. Is she hot?"

Justin ignored the last question. "The stuff on St. John's computer is still saved in Belinda Lambert's BlackBerry?"

"Yup."

"And you can access it?"

"Yup. Already did."

"Ben, I'm sorry, but I want to make sure I have this straight. When St. John's calendar book and address book were erased, that didn't erase what was transferred to Belinda's BlackBerry?"

"Yeah, I'm tellin' you, it wasn't erased. I mean it was, but whoever did it didn't understand the way this St. John guy set his work up. Everything entered into his Outlook system or anything sent to him on e-mail was automatically transferred to her name and became a separate entity. It was like it was automatically cc'd to her-you know what I mean? It didn't just put his system onto hers, it created a separate entity."

"And St. John had to have known this, right?"

"I think so. You said he's the one who set it up, right?"

"Right." Justin looked at Reggie. "It means St. John wasn't the one who erased the material. If he had, he would have figured out a way to erase Belinda's, too." He turned back to Ben. "Right?"

"Yeah. I mean, that's what I'd say. But I'm just the computer geek. You're the cop-you know what I mean?"

Justin smiled. The broadest smile he'd managed in quite some time.

"I transferred it all to your computer," Ben said. "Filed under St.John. It's a cool name. You want to see it?"