But both of them? Together?
She knew Martha and Buck had gone out together sometimes in the afternoons, even though they weren’t supposed to. But what on earth would they be doing in the mayor’s neighborhood?
A shiver trickled down her spine. Where the hell did Buck get all that money, anyway? He didn’t exactly look as if he were descended from royalty.
Deanna felt a cold, icy sensation oozing through the marrow of her bones and chilling the blood in her veins. What was happening here? What was happening to their lives?
She couldn’t sort this out. She couldn’t think clearly. All she could think about was the one central question that kept racing through her mind.
Her eyes darted involuntarily toward her daughter’s bedroom door. Martha—!
Was it really you?
Chapter 18
CHRISTINA MET BEN AT the door. “I found the sister,” she announced, beaming.
“That was quick.”
She fluttered her eyelashes. “Am I not your faithful aide-de-camp? Am I not resourceful beyond measure?”
“Uh-huh,” Ben answered. “But seriously, how did you find her?”
“You know what they say. Cherchez la femme.”
“Christina!”
“She was listed in the phone book.”
Ben smiled. “Amazing.”
“Now this is odd,” Jones muttered from behind his computer.
Ben and Christina crossed the office to his desk. A steady ping, every second or so, was coming from the computer. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been doing some research online,” Jones explained. “Follow-ups on the city council, like you wanted. I sent out a lot of feelers on the Web and to some of the big databases and search engines on the Net.”
Ben leaned toward the computer screen. “Did you get a response?”
“Oh, yeah. According to my e-mail folder”—he clicked his mouse twice—“I received exactly four thousand eight hundred sixty-six responses.”
“You’re joking.”
“And they’re still coming in.”
Christina crowded between them. “I can’t believe there are that many computer hackers with titillating stories about city councilmen.”
“I don’t know what these messages are about. Look for yourself. They’re not addressed to me. They’re addressed to the Boss.”
Ben saw his name headlining a tall, staggered stack of cyber-envelopes:
BENJAMIN KINCAID, ESQ.
“To me? That doesn’t make any sense,” Ben whispered. “I don’t know any of these computer hackers.”
“You may not know them,” Jones replied. “But they sure know you.”
“Four thousand of them?”
“And counting. They’re still coming in.”
The computer suddenly erupted with a series of beeps and bells. Screens flashed. The stack of cyber-envelopes expanded to infinity. “What’s going on?”
Jones was frantically pushing keyboard buttons and clicking the mouse. “I don’t know. The computer seems to have lost its mind. It’s showing hundreds of messages coming in at once. No, make that thousands. The computer’s jamming up.”
“Get rid of them,” Ben said.
Jones continued banging the keyboard. “I can’t. That’s just it. Whoever is sending these messages is tying up the modem connection. I can’t get rid of them and I can’t get past them to do anything else. I can’t even exit.” He turned suddenly. “Boss, this is computer warfare.”
“Huh?”
“Sabotage. Someone doesn’t want me to be able to do my work. Correction: doesn’t want you to be able to do your work.”
“How could anyone send so many messages all at once?”
“Our friend must have a program or subroutine that generates them spontaneously. Spamming, we call it. This is pretty sophisticated stuff. Someone is trying to screw you up but good.”
Ben got an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Let’s look at one of them,” he suggested. “Can we do that?”
“I think so.” Jones clicked on the top envelope in the computer window. A short message was revealed: SICK HEART.
“That’s it?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
“Let’s look at the next one.”
They looked at the next message, and the next and the next, but they were all the same: SICK HEART.
“This is really weird,” Jones said.
“Second the motion,” Ben murmured.
“Look,” Christina said, “we need to know where these messages are coming from. Can you trace them?”
“That’s way beyond my capabilities,” Jones answered. “There aren’t many skid marks on the superhighway.”
“Well, can you tell who’s sending it?”
“I can get his online name and e-mail address, but almost no one uses their real name.” He punched a few buttons on the keyboard. “The sender has direct access to the Net. He’s not using CompuServe or Delphi or any third-party carrier.”
“Sick Heart?” Christina said aloud. “What does that mean?”
“It’s what Wallace Barrett said the other day in court,” Ben replied. “He said he was sick at heart about the killings.”
“Apparently someone else is, too,” Jones said. “Someone who isn’t too happy that you took Barrett’s case.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Christina said. “It’s not like this is the first time Ben ever represented an unpopular defendant. Ben’s made a lot of enemies these past few years.”
“Oh, thank you very much,” Ben said. “Now I feel much better.”
“Look, it’s probably just a prank. I mean, it’s not as if it threatened you.”
“No. Not yet.”
“I think the best thing is to just ignore it.”
“I can’t ignore it,” Jones said, throwing his hands into the air. “My keyboard is totally locked up.”
“Can’t you block messages from this source?”
“Not without access to the keyboard. I can’t do anything right now.”
“Then pull the plug.”
Jones looked horrified. “Boss! Do you know what you’re saying?”
“It’s not a living being, Jones. It’s a machine.”
“Says you.”
“I don’t think you have any choice. It’s no good to you like this.”
Jones sighed. “True. But unplugging it won’t make the interference go away. The messages will just stack up in my mailbox until they can be delivered.”
“We’ll get a new phone line put in and get a new e-mail address. Will that take care of the problem?”
Jones shrugged. “I guess. Till Sick Heart gets the new number, anyway.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t.”
“In the meantime, how will I get my work done?”
“I’ve still got my old college typewriter in my office.”
Jones looked aghast. “Are you joking? Me? A typewriter? As in typing paper? Return bars? Liquid Paper?”
“I don’t see that we have any alternative.”
“Well, this is just beyond the pale.”
Ben didn’t hear Jones’s dismayed protestations. He was still staring at the flickering computer screen.
Sick Heart. Sick Heart. Sick Heart.
Chapter 19
MIKE MORELLI RACED TO finish his paperwork. He had reports to complete pertaining to the still-unsolved murder of the homeless man, plus he needed to get the Barrett murder report finished while it was still reasonably fresh on his mind. He knew that his report would be closely scrutinized by judges and reporters, and worst of all, by lawyers, and it would probably end up as Prosecution Exhibit One, so it had better be done right.
The city council had finally allocated funds for the purchase of computers for the Tulsa police department, and Mike now had one on his desk. He had never used one before and probably wouldn’t have started if Chief Blackwell hadn’t complained about the time Mike wasted battering out reports on typewriters. So Mike had agreed to give the computer a try. So far, his work was taking about four times as long to complete. Last night, he had inadvertently deleted an entire day’s work. Why didn’t they tell you up front that you had to save before you could turn off the computer? With a typewriter, when you were done, you were done.