Макс Коллинз - No One Will Hear You

Polk said, “We’re not Immigration.”

Amari said, “Mr. Olmstad, could you tell me one thing — and I promise it won’t get you in trouble. You admitted this is the kind of hotel where couples can go to spend a few hours together.”

He shrugged uncomfortably.

“Did you ever have a guest ask about the cameras? Whether they worked? Maybe how long the tapes were kept before they were disposed of, or reused?”

“Well... sometimes guests say something in a kind of joking way. Guy checking in with a girl... or even a guy checking in with... a guy. Might kid me, and say something like, ‘I don’t have to worry about these cameras, do I?’ ”

“Oh-kay,” Amari said. “And what might you say?”

“I might... I guess I maybe might kid ‘em back.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I might say... don’t worry about those cameras. They been busted a long time.”

Amari and Polk traded tortured glances.

“But,” Amari said to Olmstad, “you wouldn’t know who any of those guests would be?”

“Sorry. No. Well, there’s probably some named ‘John Smith,’ that kind of thing. But as far as our staff, I’ve got a list out front that we can photocopy for you.”

“Oh,” Polk said innocently, “your photocopy machine works?”

“Oh yes.”

“That’s nice.”

Amari gave her partner a look, but she could hardly blame him for the dig, not that either of the Olmstads picked up on it.

“That staff list will be helpful,” Amari told the couple pleasantly. “We need to rule them out as suspects and see if any might’ve mentioned the broken cameras to anybody who innocently passed that information along.”

Soon Olmstad was handing Amari a photocopy of the single-page list, which she folded and slipped into a pocket of her Windbreaker.

“Thank you,” Amari said. Then to both: “Can you think of anybody not staff who might know the cameras were out of commission?”

“We don’t advertise that they’re not functioning,” Mr. Olmstad said, as if joking with guests about it didn’t qualify. “We figured if no one knew they were busted, the things’d still work as a, you know, deterrent.”

“All due respect, sir? You might want to reconsider that policy.”

With her pale complexion and skinny frame, Jenny Blake might be taken for an anemic. But there was nothing anemic about her — as a teen, she’d engaged child molesters online. Then when they showed up at her foster parents’ house, she would call the cops. She’d done this on her own, and after a few times, law enforcement had stopped scolding her and hired her.

So Harrow telling her to keep digging into the background of Wendi Erskine had been entirely unnecessary; she figured he probably knew as much, but bosses liked to give orders to make them feel they were in charge.

Since facial recognition software had matched the victim’s face to DMV records, Jenny started there.

Twenty-five-year-old Wendi Erskine had blonde hair, blue eyes, weighed one hundred eighteen pounds and owned a silver 2007 Honda CRX. She

had a couple of parking tickets (paid), but no moving violations. Her address was in Pomona. She was an organ donor.

There had been only one red flag, but it was very, very red...

Harrow came through her open door. “Tell me what you’ve found.”

She liked that, him assuming she’d found something. She gave him the DMV info.

“Any employment?”

Nodding, Jenny said, “Actress — a few indies, a little TV, quite a few infomercials.”

“You don’t go to Julliard hoping to work in infomercials.”

“I don’t have anything saying she went to Julliard—”

“I just meant — little girls don’t dream of growing up and starring in a Juice Master spot.”

“Probably not,” she admitted, “but Wendi was making better money at it than you’d think.”

“Why, is that significant?”

She hesitated.

The straight line of his mouth curved faintly into a smile. “Okay, Jen — who’d you hack?”

“Her money was in a small savings and loan in Pomona. Their security isn’t exactly... secure.”

“So?”

“So Wendi had a checking account with a little over two hundred dollars, a savings account with just under twelve thousand, and a Roth IRA she started last summer. Less than three thousand in that.”

Looking thoughtful, Harrow leaned a palm on her desktop. “Wendi wasn’t rich, but she was doing pretty well for a kid only twenty-five.”

“Yeah,” Jenny said with a few nods. “Plus, she’d been doing infomercials since she was eighteen, and the TV and independent film stuff I mentioned. And she didn’t spend much.”

“Okay. What aren’t you telling me?”

“The Roth is fine, but the other two accounts aren’t.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re empty.”

“As in... somebody emptied them?”

“Yup.”

Harrow’s eyes narrowed. “Somebody was stealing from our victim. But was that part of why she was killed?”

“Yes.”

“You sound confident.”

“She was murdered over the weekend and the accounts weren’t emptied until Monday morning.”

Harrow’s eyes widened. “Holy... you’re saying Don Juan did it? He wiped her out?”

“We have no evidence that says that,” she admitted. “Everything else does, though.”

He half sat on the edge of her desk. “Okay, Jen. Now you’re going to tell me how he did it.”

She was loving this. “Sure. Easy. He went online as Wendi, then just wire-transferred it all to an off-shore account. He had her passwords and everything.”

“How the hell did he get her passwords?”

“There are a couple of ways,” she said. “First, he could have sent her a Trojan horse e-mail that allowed him to capture her log-ons, keystrokes, basically everything that she did with her computer.”

“Well, that’s scary. And second?”

“He found a way to get her to give them up while he held her.”

“That’s scarier.” Harrow thought for a few moments. “Of course, there were no signs of torture...”

She said nothing. Harrow had emphasized the word “signs,” she knew, because there were lots of ways to inflict pain and instill fear that didn’t show.

Harrow asked, “Can you trace the computer activity?”

“This guy knows his stuff, boss. I followed the video he sent us through seventeen countries and fifty-two remailers, then the trail died. I’ll try. Gonna be tough, savvy as Don Juan seems.”

“You’re saying you can’t do it?”

She cocked her head and gave him a look. “You’re just trying to push my buttons now, aren’t you?”

“Maybe. Let me know when you have something more. Get some sleep, though — tomorrow is show day, remember.”

“Watch me sparkle,” she said deadpan.

They both knew she’d likely work most of the night.

From the doorway, he said, “One other thing?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you please get a visitor’s chair? Guy my age likes to take a load off, now and then.”

“We’ll see.”

Jenny got back to it. Hacking the credit union had been hard, even for someone with her skills. The off-shore account in the Caymans was maybe a hundred times worse, and after two more hours, she was barely any closer to her goal.

A knock at the door frame made her jump, and she looked up to see Chris Anderson standing there in a pale yellow polo and chinos.

“Sorry, Jen — didn’t mean to startle you.”

“That’s okay. Kinda woke me up.” She rubbed her eyes, then stretched in her chair as he strolled in.