Who could already be dead, she reminded herself. Who told this monster nothing because he had nothing to tell.
She knew that Leland Brooks’s fate should have been enough to make her capitulate right then. Maybe that was what her captor had in mind-that simple dread would make her weaker. To her astonishment, it had exactly the opposite effect. A pulse of absolute abhorrence shot through her, filling her body with a physical strength she didn’t know she had.
Ali fought him then, fought him tooth and nail, biting and scratching in a desperate attempt to maim him, to knee him in the groin or gouge out his eyes. He outweighed her, though. He was taller and far stronger. She knew going in that no matter how hard she fought, eventually, she would lose. That was inevitable.
Yes, Ali thought as he forced her down on her knees beside the tub and pressed her face toward the water. Dreading what was coming, she took one last desperate gasp of air, filling her lungs as he grabbed the back of her neck and plunged her head underwater.
Dave Holman’s phone rang again as he approached the exit at Cordes Junction. “Is this Detective Holman?”
“Yes. Who is this, and how did you get my number?”
“My name is Simpson-B. Simpson. I run an Internet security firm called High Noon. Ali Reynolds is one of my clients, and I have access to her files. I found your numbers listed in her contact list. Have you heard from her?”
“From Ali? Not in the last little while,” Dave replied. “I missed a couple of calls from her earlier this morning, but when I tried calling back, she didn’t answer. Why? What’s up? Is something wrong?”
B. paused before he answered. “I know the two of you have a lot of history,” he said tentatively. “And this would probably be better coming from her, but…”
“What would be better coming from her?” Dave asked impatiently. “What are you talking about?”
“I have a name for you,” B. said. “A name for the case you’re working on. The man’s name is Winter-Dr. Peter Winter. I just Googled him. He’s an ER physician at Phoenix General.”
“Which case would that be?” Dave asked.
“Morgan Forester’s murder,” B. answered.
“And how exactly is this Dr. Winter supposed to be related?”
“Earlier this week I discovered that a worm had taken up residence in Ali’s computer. I was able to neutralize it before it could do any irreparable damage, and we assumed it was just a case of attempted identity theft. A little while ago, Ali brought me a pair of thumb drives Bryan Forester had given her for safekeeping. They contained copies of files from his computer and from Morgan’s as well. The same worm had been planted in the thumb-drive files. If they had been opened on a computer with access to the Internet, those files would have been destroyed, the same way the files were destroyed on the two computers you picked up on your search warrant. Once again, I’ve neutralized the worm before it was able to do any damage.”
“Wait,” Dave said. “You’re saying the same worm that was on the Foresters’ computers was also on Ali’s? How can you be sure?”
“How does an epidemiologist know one strain of flu from another?” B. returned. “By analyzing the makeup of the virus that causes each individual case. This is the same thing. All three worms come from the same basic source-in other words, from the same programmer. Had the worm actually been unleashed, the end result would have been slightly different. For instance, the Trojan in Ali’s system was set to simply crash the computer. The worm on the Foresters’ computers was set to overwrite files. But it’s still the same guy.”
Dave’s heartbeat quickened. The guy was a doctor? That might explain the single unexplained needle mark the ME had found at the back of Morgan Forester’s neck, in a spot where it couldn’t possibly have been self-administered. And now there was another crashed computer? Anxious not to give anything away, the next time he spoke, Dave was careful to keep his voice and his questions firmly neutral. “What does this Winter character have to do with any of this?”
“That’s the thing,” B. said. “I gave Ali a choice. I told her we could pursue legal recourse, or we could go after the guy on our own.”
“Don’t tell me,” Dave said. “I already know where Ali Reynolds came down on that one.”
“Yes,” B. agreed, “you do. So we sent the guy a worm of our own and picked up all the files from his PC in the process.”
“In other words, you used an illegal wiretap. Evidence from that wouldn’t be admissible in a court of law.”
“Maybe not,” B. agreed. “But it’s good enough for an anonymous tip. Most of Winter’s files are encrypted. I’m working on breaking the code. So far I haven’t had much luck, but I did come across one unencrypted file-one he somehow missed: his initial licensing agreement with Microsoft from back when he first purchased the computer. That’s where I got his name. He’s apparently connected to an Internet dating site called Singleatheart. Ali’s computer was infected after she registered at that site. I believe Singleatheart may also have some connection to the Forester murder.”
Listening intently to every word, Dave fought to avoid betraying his eagerness. Maybe the files Ali had offered him were the Foresters’ real files after all. If someone besides Bryan had tried to destroy them, maybe Dave had missed something. It was possible that this Winter guy was in on everything with Bryan Forester. It was also possible Dave was wrong.
As the Cordes Junction exit came up, Dave switched on his turn signal. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see about looking into this all this, Mr.-” He paused. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Simpson. B. Simpson.”
Once he was off the exit ramp, Dave pulled over. “And how do I get back to you?”
B. gave him a phone number. After ending the call, Dave wasted no time putting in another one-to Phoenix General Hospital. His first call, to the ER, came up empty. Dr. Winter was not due in today, and the person who took the call said he was expected to be away for an indefinite period. Dave’s next call was to the hospital’s administration office. It took a while before he managed to work his way up the chain of command and found someone who seemed to know what was going on.
“Yes, Dr. Winter is on staff here,” a woman named Louise Granger told him. “But he’s currently on leave. His mother was taken ill overnight and was transported to an ICU. Dr. Winter flew out to be with her first thing this morning.”
“Did he say where?” Dave asked.
“I don’t remember the exact location. He may not have even mentioned it to me, but I believe it was somewhere in upstate New York. Buffalo, maybe.”
Dave ended the call and then looked at his watch. He wanted to go back to Phoenix and start following up on this lead, but he had told the people at the office to wait for him-that he wanted to be on the scene when it came time to execute the search warrant. Since it wasn’t possible to be in two places at once, he picked up the phone and punched in the number for Detective Sean O’Brien of the Scottsdale PD.
“Hey,” O’Brien said once Dave had identified himself. “Have I got some hot news for you. Mr. Morrison’s got nothing to do with that homicide case of yours.”
“What makes you say that?” Dave asked.
“After you left, I went back to Jenny Morrison. I convinced her that with Mr. Morrison’s computer broken, and in order to ascertain that her husband hadn’t committed suicide, we needed access to his e-mail accounts, which she was happy to give me. It turns out that the day before he died, Mr. Morrison went through his mail account and deleted a large number of messages. Unfortunately for him, the deleted messages were still stored on his ISP. He wasn’t in Sedona on Monday morning. He was actually down in a new development called Red Rock, where he was hoping to meet up with a sweet little real estate babe he met over the Internet. He was all hot to trot and hoping to get lucky, but she stood him up.”