L.A. Bytes (3 page)

“So you’re not going to catch this guy in the act. All we can do is follow his trail.”

“And play catch-up,” Terry muttered. “Not good enough.”

Chris shrugged. “We may not fi gure out who he is, but we can head him off. Damage control.”

Terry sucked at his coffee. He dug through the box and nibbled a donut.

Chris grabbed one too and went back to scanning fi les. It was tedious work. He had set up a simple script that would show only those fi les which had been changed in forty-eight hours. It was still a load of fi les. Thousands at least.

He copied each fi le that fi t the criteria and put it in a temporary folder for examination later. Time crept by and before either of them knew it was six in the morning and the hospital was coming to life.

Chris blinked and leapt up. “Jesus, David—” Under Terry’s puzzled gaze, he pulled out his BlackBerry and dialed home.

A groggy sounding David answered on the fi fth ring. When he realized who was calling he growled, “I told you I was fi ne.

I’ve already told Martinez I won’t be in today. Happy?”

Chris was, and wasn’t afraid to show it. “Sleep then. I’ll bring something special for dinner, okay?”

16 P.A. Brown

“Fine, good. I’ll see you then.”

Chris put his phone away, pulled his pen out, and skimmed it across a line of text on the screen. “A MAC address.” A MAC

address was hard-coded into every piece of network hardware and was unique to that piece of equipment. “Recognize it?”

Chris asked.

“That’s a 3COM card,” Terry said. “Makes it a workstation.”

“This is internal, then. Where is it?” They may have just found their point of entry.

At a DOS prompt Chris tapped out an nslookup command.

It would give him the computer name that was linked to the MAC

address. The name that came back was THD028.

“That’s on the third fl oor.” Terry scribbled in a dog-eared notebook. Like most system administrators, Terry wrote liberal notes to himself. He shared an uneasy look with Chris. “There’s maybe a dozen workstations on that fl oor. It should be easy to fi nd.”

At one point Terry spent a heated fi fteen minutes on the phone with his boss and Chris didn’t need to hear the other end of the conversation to know it wasn’t good. A second call confi rmed that. They’d found more damning evidence of fi le damage. Terry looked at Chris with haunted eyes.

“Several patients on the third fl oor have had their medications compromised.” Terry closed his eyes. “One of them just died.”

Chris felt something inside him contract. He couldn’t breathe for the lump in his throat. The next words out of Terry’s mouth were even more chilling.

“And to make matters worse, the press is here.”

Chris had far too much experience with the fi fth estate. He knew too damn well how they were masters of manipulation, and how the worst of them practiced an in-your-face frontal assault.

He had been badly burned by zealous reporters when David had been outed and Chris had found himself the cops’ number one suspect in a series of gruesome murders.

L.A. BYTES
17

David’s career as an LAPD homicide detective had nearly been sabotaged. Chris had lost the job he’d worked years to secure and both of them survived by sheer, stubborn persistence. It had taken them months to recover from the disaster. The only good that had come of it was David. Now someone had invaded their lives, threatening David’s life.

A red-hot rage threatened his thin hold on his composure.

How dare they.

Chris scrubbed the grit and sleep out of his eyes. His hands rasped over his unshaven face and his mouth felt like a landfi ll site. Even a mug of Terry’s free trade coffee hadn’t helped.

Finally at eight o’clock Terry collapsed in a chair, nearly spilling onto the fl oor. Around him the deadening glow of the monitors cast a baleful light.

Chris sank into a chair beside him. He felt numb.

“We have to take a break,” he said. “Is there anyone you can call in to take over—?”

Terry’s cell rang again. Another heated conversation followed.

Terry disconnected and sagged in the chair. “That was Hugh Denton, the hospital administrator. Major dickhead, but he insists on being in the middle of this. ‘Keeping his hand on the pulse.’” Terry buried his head in his hands. “I am so fucked.”

Finally he met Chris’s gaze. “I can call Yuri. He’s done work for us before.”

Chris glanced at his watch. “Call him then. We’ll meet back here in four hours.”

“My mind stopped working two hours ago.”

Chris crawled out of his chair, joints creaking in protest. He arched backward, feeling his spine crackle, barely suppressing a groan.

“Now how the hell do we get out of here?” he asked. “Without running the gauntlet of reporters?”

■ □ ■ □

18 P.A. Brown

The elevator glided open onto the back ward. Chris poked his head out to an empty corridor. So far so good.

A few feet from the back exit, he heard his name and a voice he had never wanted to hear again. “Chris! Is it true computer hackers attacked the hospital?”

Roz Parnell was a reporter for the
L.A. Times
. Years ago, when Chris and David found infamy clinging to them like a bad smell, Roz had pursued them with a single-minded purpose.

The publicity might have helped his new business, but it left a bad taste in his mouth for the press.

How had she heard about the attack? He knew damn well neither Terry nor Denton would have told her. The hospital administrator would be having kittens if he knew Roz was here.

“How serious was it, Chris?” Roz was a red-haired brazen woman with a penchant for pink jackets and Prada heels. She also had a surprisingly dulcet voice. That voice, he was sure, had fooled more than one person into revealing things they hadn’t intended. “Did you know the man who died?”

He wasn’t going to play in her sandbox. He ducked away from her and muttered, “No comment.”

“Do you think this was a deliberate act of sabotage?” Roz persisted. “How vulnerable are our hospitals? Will they strike again?” She shoved her perfumed cleavage into his face. “Is this the work of terrorists, Chris? Do you expect more deaths as a result of this? Or do you think it’s teenage hackers?”

“Crackers,” Chris said, then his curiosity got the better of him. “How did you even fi nd out?”

Roz smiled. “Some people believe the public has a right to know this kind of thing. We were alerted—”

“You got a phone call,” Chris said. “It ever occur to you the guy who broke into the hospital made the call? You like feeding the ego of a killer?”

Roz was writing furiously. “So you admit there was an attack?

Is the hospital going to hire you to fi nd out who did it?”

L.A. BYTES
19

“No comment—”

He shoved past her. She followed him to the parking lot, trotting to keep up with his long strides.

“Is it true David was impacted by this? How serious was he affected—?”

He slammed the car door and cranked the engine. Grabbing a U2 CD he put it on and turned it up loud before rolling down the car window. “No comment,” he shouted over the thunder of Bono’s voice. “Now leave both of us the hell alone.”

Tuesday 8:45 am, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles
Chris pulled into the driveway and shut the engine off. David’s Chevy ‘56 two-tone sport coupe was still parked in the driveway.

He had done what he said and stayed home. Unmoving, Chris sat watching a squirrel make short dashes across the lawn, fi nally bolting for a eucalyptus when Chris’s neighbor walked by with their black lab.

Chris climbed out of the car, waved hello to the neighbor and entered the cool foyer. Sergeant rushed the door to greet him. Absently he patted the animal’s blocky head. The house was quiet. David must still be in bed. A frisson of alarm skittered across his nerves. David wasn’t the type to sleep in even if he was home sick.

Dumping his keys on the foyer table, he slipped his shoes off.

In stocking feet he padded up the stairs. The dog followed.

The bed was empty. In fact there was no sign it had even been slept in. A quick look in the bathroom confi rmed it. David was not in the house.

“Where’d he go, boy? Where’s David?”

With growing alarm, Chris hurried back down the stairs into the kitchen. No sign the coffee pot had been used. An empty cup in the sink held the dregs of orange juice. His alarm faded, replaced by a growing annoyance.

Growing more pissed by the minute, Chris looked for a note he knew wasn’t there. He even checked the answering machine in case David had called after leaving. Nothing. Chris knew where David was. Martinez had called or he had called Martinez. This time, David had answered his siren call. He’d gone back to work just a few hours after having a dangerous anaphylactic reaction.

22 P.A. Brown

Too wound up to rest now, though he knew he would pay for the neglect sooner rather than later, Chris tried David’s cell. No answer. He fi nally broke down and called the Northeast Station.

He wasn’t surprised that David wasn’t there, and no, he wasn’t going to leave a message with the offi cious desk sergeant who answered the phone.

Hanging up, he set about making a pot of coffee. If he couldn’t rest, he might as well make the most of his time. While he waited for the coffee, he took the clothes out of the drier and trotted back upstairs, folding and putting them away. Then he cleaned the already spotless bathroom and tidied the bedroom.

Sergeant and Sweeney, the Siamese cat David had brought to their relationship, followed him around until he got the hint and fed them both. Sweeney wrapped around his ankles, purring hoarsely, throwing one jaundiced eye at the dog he had fi nally grown to tolerate. Barely. Chris scooped the cat up.

“You miss him too, don’t you?” Chris rubbed the sleek seal-colored head. He glanced down at Sergeant. “He didn’t happen to mention where he was going, did he?”

Neither animal answered.

Tuesday, 10:20 am, Carillon Street, Atwater, Los Angeles
Another body; another dead woman.

David had lost count of the number of corpses he had seen in his ten years as a homicide detective. Instead he concentrated on studying the body on the bed. Whatever struggle she might have waged, in the end it didn’t show on the unmarked, vanilla plain face. In the background an air conditioner hummed loudly.

David was glad for his suit jacket; the room was cold. It was also almost antiseptically clean. He rubbed his pock-marked face. His skin felt mottled with goose bumps.

“It seem cool in here to you?”

L.A. BYTES
23

“Some people got more money than brains.” Martinez, his partner of nearly twelve years narrowed his dark eyes and took in the bed and its occupant. “How long you fi gure she’s been dead?”

The scent of decay rode the cool air. But faint, just a hint of the mordant stench to come.

“No fl ies.”

“She kept a clean apartment.”

“You really think she always kept it this cold?” David pulled on a pair of gloves and crouched beside the bed. He couldn’t touch the body, but while they waited for the coroner, he could look around. “Who did you say found her?”

“Neighbor called it in,” Martinez said. “Our Lady of Antarctica here didn’t go to Sunday mass, something she never missed. She rarely left the place except to go to church. Neighbor thought maybe she’d gone to visit family, then she missed a very special church meeting yesterday. According to her, this proved something was wrong. So she fi nally convinced the super to open up this morning.”

Like an under-smell that grew on his senses, the stink of decay ripened. Despite his fi rst thought that this was a new body, David suddenly knew she’d been a corpse for a while. Instinct hewn from years of being a cop. Instinct he trusted. Atop the bedside table sat an alarm clock and a fi ve by ten framed picture of a gangly teenage boy and Nancy Scott. Mother and son? Nephew?

No way it could be grandson. Not enough age between them. He looked around. One other picture, the same boy, slightly older. No images of a man who might be the father. Never married? Didn’t jibe with the woman being so religious. Divorced? Widowed? He looked back at the body.

“Somebody didn’t want her found.”

“ME’s on her way,” Martinez said, pulling on a pair of thin gloves. Powder puffed out and lingered briefl y in the cool, still air.

“Let’s toss the place. Ten says she’s been dead forty-eight.”

24 P.A. Brown

David studied the dead woman’s left hand on top of the fl owered comforter. He noticed the faint purplish hue at the ends of her fi ngers. He crouched beside the bed, taking a closer look without touching. “Seventy-two.”

“Put your money where your mouth is.”

“You’re on.” David moved to stand up, and paused, fi ngers braced on the carpeted fl oor beside the bed. In the shadows formed by the comforter something darker lay concealed.

Casually, David fl ipped aside the covering. He reached in and pulled out two tiny, dark brown paper wrappers.

“What have you got?”

David leaned back on his heels. He raised a wrapper to his face and gingerly sniffed. “Chocolate.”

“So our victim’s mowing down on chocolates in bed.”

Martinez glanced sourly at a book on the night table. There was an image of a half-naked man and woman entwined on the cover.

“My wife reads that crap. What do they get out of it?”

“Fantasy. It’s not about you.”

Martinez scowled. “So, she’s reading bad literature and indulging in a candy fi x.”

“Where’s the rest of the chocolates?” David prowled the room, staring down into the wicker garbage pail. A yellow bag lined the receptacle. “Where’s the empty box? Where’s the rest of the
garbage
?”

They moved systematically through each room. Splitting duties, David took the bedroom, probing closets and drawers, and under the sparse furnishings that fi lled the pin-neat apartment.

The rugs were spotless, the furniture looked like a showroom.