Searching for Secrets (12 page)

"I thought of that, too." She frowned. "But, I don't have a computer, remember? When they broke into my apartment they took it. I think I saw a program that might do what you're talking about, though." Christa had a vague memory of something like that in Mr. Watkins' store. “Maybe we could get it and use it on one of the police computers."

"We could if I was supposed to be working on this. I'm officially off the case. Captain told me if I stick my nose into this even half an inch I'll get a formal reprimand, or worse. And while I don't give a crap if it means I find these guys, I'd just as soon not get kicked off the force."

Christa studied his expression for a second. While she wasn't too concerned about his police career, she didn't want to get shot at again, or have anything happen to Frances or Amy. "I need to get another one anyway. My insurance company will reimburse me for almost all of the cost of the one they stole. Why don't we go down to the computer store and see what he has in stock?"

KIRK WATCHED CHRISTA'S FRIENDLY NEGOTIATIONS with Mr. Watkins. The store owner had several brands of computers, with varying capabilities, in stock. No doubt they would leave with one of them. At lunch, she had told him that she was certain Watkins had donated the third computer for her students. Though he tried to deny it at first, Christa had finally gotten him to admit his generosity. Christa had promised she wouldn't let on that she knew. But, she had to know. It was just like her. Stubbornly persistent. But, generous. In his car sat the rag doll she had insisted on buying for Amy. She wouldn't hear of letting Kirk do it.

He walked over to the game software and studied the program she had shown him. Crypto-Gram promised help in decoding anything from military secrets to mysterious ancient writings. If its designers thought they had something to use in a war scenario, it might help. This felt like a battle, in more ways than one. He looked toward Christa again and watched her examine one of the two models she seemed to be most considering. She was rubbing her fingers, and he gathered the cast pinched. He walked over to where she sat looking at the computer she had talked about most to Mr. Watkins.

"About decided?"

"I think so. Sorry to keep you so long." She looked from the screen to him. "Mr. Watkins is just making sure he has one of these in his warehouse so I can take the one in the back room here. He'd already planned it for someone else."

Kirk nodded and watched her adroitly manipulate from screen to screen using the mouse. "You learn how to go that fast by watching the kids at school?"

"They have a lot more dexterity than I have. Why don't you grab that decoding game and we'll try it."

"You can open it and use it?" he asked.

"I already told him we were going to buy it." She smiled as she nodded toward the display. "I think he thinks we're a couple of spies."

He used a pocket knife to slit the cellophane on the Crypto-Gram software. "Here you go, teacher," he said as he dropped it on the table next to her. He watched Christa's intent expression as she started to explore the software's capabilities. It was going to be a lot easier to work with her rather than against her. A stray thought reminded him of how it felt to lift her out of his truck and he banished it. When he wasn't furious with her for getting in the way, he liked Christa Heckertt. She was good with Amy, but she wasn't his type. Much too serious. And she never talked about family, barely seemed to have any friends. If he were to spend considerable time with a woman, she had to recognize that family was first with him. He dubbed Christa more interested in computers than people.

.

Mr. Watkins walked up. "Sorry about the interruption." He nodded to Kirk. He was a good salesman, Kirk thought. Pleasant, but no extraneous conversation.

"You do have it in the warehouse?" Christa asked.

Watkins nodded. "Sure do. I wish I could give it to you for an even lower price, but the mall management just raised the rent again."

Kirk glanced around the well-stocked store. "You must do a pretty good business here."

"Not as much volume as you'd think," Watkins said, with a slight frown. "There are so many more stores selling computers these days. These big retail outlets, they just don't give the same service I do, but..." He shrugged and spread his hands. "What are you going to do?"

"Gosh," Christa said, "I almost feel as if I should offer to pay more."

Watkins laughed. "Two of your teacher friends have come here at your recommendation. I should probably give you a commission.”

“Do they raise your rent often?” Kirk asked. He figured Watkins had to have a lot invested in stock, and it was hard to tell if he could move it quickly.

“Almost every year. If they miss a year, they make up for it the next year.” Watkins shrugged. “I guess if I were in their shoes, I would, too. If I leave they can always replace me.”

“Have you been in here since the mall opened?” Christa asked.

“Five years. I was a chemist with the corn processing plant that closed just before that. Took my severance pay and used it to open this.”

“Gee. It would be tough to make such a change…” Christa began. Kirk figured she had been about to say ‘at your age’ and decided better of it.

Watkins seemed anxious to change the subject. "Now, if you want the computer in the back we can load it into your car right now."

Watkins didn't look pleased at the suggestion, but he went along with her on it, offering only the caution that the warranty was much less generous for floor models than new computers. Christa didn't seem to mind.

She gave him her charge card, and Kirk began to load the computer into the box Mr. Watkins had brought from the back room. His thoughts went back to the high-speed chase that morning. He had remembered the plate number, and Hadley had quickly been able to determine that the van was stolen. That had to mean its occupants planned their attack, possibly even laid in wait at his apartment. He could have led them to Mahaska Springs. Maybe they would have killed two birds with one stone. Amy's face momentarily danced in front of him. Or three. He gave an involuntary shudder.

"You sure you don't need a cart to use to transport this to your car?" Mr. Watkins asked. "It would be no trouble to lend you one for a few minutes."

"Thanks, but she's the one with the bad arm." Kirk hoisted the box. One of the few things he knew about computers, besides how to scan the police databases, was that current models were much lighter weight than earlier models. "It's the video monitor that's heavy, and the thieves kindly left her that."

Christa extended her hand to the store owner. "I'm sure I'll see you in the next couple weeks. Thanks for helping my kids."

"I felt it was the least I could do," Mr. Watkins said as he walked them to the door.

Once out of Watkins' earshot, Kirk found it impossible not to rib Christa. "Too bad he's too old for you. You could talk computers all evening."

"Very funny," she said, with an edge to her voice.

Much as he liked to see Christa Heckertt's eyes flash when she was angry with him, there was no point in harassing her. He needed to stay on good terms at least until he figured out who was behind all this.

Christa grabbed his arm, and he almost dropped the computer. "You don't want to have to buy a third one, do you?"

"Sorry. See that man?" He followed her pointing figure and his gaze rested on the back of a long leather coat. The figure was familiar, but he wouldn't be able to tell if it was who he thought it was until the guy turned around.

"He was at the hospital today," Christa continued. "I almost thought he was avoiding me because he turned around..."

"Damn!" Kirk quickly sat the computer on a nearby bench. Fast Freddy was dressed in his most expensive clothes. He must be up to something.

"What's wrong?" Christa asked, as Kurt moved away.

Kirk's mind raced. He didn't know how she would react if he told her Freddy was his personal suspect in Chas Johnson's killing and thus maybe someone connected to her computer theft. "He's a suspect in something. Stay with your computer. I'll be right back."

CHRISTA’S GAZE FOLLOWED KIRK'S BACK as he moved closer to the entrance to the large department store, trying to avoid being seen by the man in the long coat. What could he hope to accomplish, she wondered. He was off duty and it didn't look as if Kirk was carrying a gun.

Her eyes moved from Kirk's back to the man he was going to talk to. The man, who had been carefully examining a display near the entrance to a specialty store just to the left of the department store, sat down the pair of gloves and moved away. He glanced over his shoulder and seemed to look directly at Christa, but looked away again just as fast. How odd, she thought. She was certain now that she didn't know him.

Kirk had moved to within about five yards of the man when he began to walk more quickly toward the mall's main exit. Now what? As if reading her thoughts, the man looked over his shoulder and stared directly at Kirk. His expression was an unmistakable smirk, and he moved even faster. Kirk stopped and his shoulders seemed to sag. He must have seen the peculiar expression. He turned and walked slowly back to Christa.

"Why did you stop?" she asked.

"He made me. Judging from his expression he's not concerned about running into a cop."

Kirk picked up the computer box. "Next time you try to pick up men at the hospital, make it somebody who's not such a snazzy dresser."

"Very funny. Who was he? she asked.

When Kirk didn't answer, she looked up. His face was a mass of frowns. "He's the drug dealer I hoped to arrest when I got called away to your school a couple days ago. Not someone you want to fool around with."

Christa kept looking at him. Why do I think that's not the whole story?

CHAPTER NINE

CHRISTA HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT the expression "silence was deafening" to be silly, but now she understood its meaning. She and Kirk stared at the page of odd numbers and letters. Each had a yellow note pad in front of them as they sat at her dining room table. Their goal was to determine whether the amalgamated nonsense could be made meaningful. She was beginning to doubt it.

Earlier, she had loaded the Crypto-Gram software into the new computer and the two of them had examined it for half an hour before deciding either it was too complex or they were too far into adulthood to understand the logic. The screen showed a fancy "decoder ring" that the player was to move to various groups of jumbled letters. There were different kinds of formulas to use to untangle the puzzles. The titles would impress pre-teens--"Deadly Decoder," "Awesome Anagram"--but the software was not designed to let the human mind do any work. It told the players only what it wanted them to see and did not permit them to add their own list of coded phrases. Junk software, she thought; it was silly to buy it.

Without moving her head, she glanced at Kirk, sitting on her right. His morning escapade had undoubtedly caused him to work up a sweat and he smelled, not unpleasantly, like a man who knew how to work hard. She liked having him next to her, but his presence didn't help her concentration.

Focus on what you're doing. Christa had written one string of numbers at the top of her yellow pad. 11 8 4 21 23 15 4 17 * 17 4 23 15 * 5 4 17 14. She took the phone book from the cabinet near the kitchen phone and tried to determine if there were any international numbers that would use such a string. She looked down the list of country and city dialing codes. There was no country code for 11, but there were several cities--Johannesburg, New Delhi, and Belgrade. None of them were cities she thought of as actively exporting drugs to the United States. Frustrated, she pushed the phone book away.

"You're having good luck too, I see," Kirk said.

Christa nodded. "I wish I could think of a way for the computer to help us." She gently flexed her neck, which was stiff from bending over the paper for half-an-hour.

"Maybe we should go to the library to see what we can about codes, in general."

Christa snapped her fingers. "I have an encyclopedia right here. I should have thought of that." She walked back to her office and pulled the volume with 'Ce-Da' off the shelf and returned to the dining room table. "You can do the searching."

"We men have all the tough jobs."

Christa said nothing, but watched him flip from the word 'code' and then to 'cryptography.' At his frown, she suggested, "Try cipher, it's what we women would look under."

Kirk's slight smile told her he'd accepted the dig. He flipped to that section and began skimming.

Christa watched him absorb the information, wondering if it made any difference to him that she was sitting just a few inches from him. You might as well be a dish of cat food. She leaned over and ran her good hand down Brandy's back and smiled to herself. If she had a dog she supposed it would be dog food.

"Listen to this," Kirk began. "All ciphers are created by one of two methods--transposition and substitution. A transposition cipher retains the same letters but moves them from their normal position."

"Like an anagram," Christa injected.

"Yeah, I guess. A substitution cipher exchanges the letters in what they call the 'plaintext' for other letters or symbols, while the order stays the same. And..." he skimmed further down the page, "the example they give is Morse code, which uses dots and dashes to stand for letters of the alphabet."

She ignored his smirk. "We write down the alphabet and have an A stand for a B, a B for a C, and so on. If that doesn't work, the next time an A stands for a C, a B for a D."