L.A. Bytes (23 page)

David’s fl esh felt numb as he leafed through the rest of the pictures. As far as he could tell they were all taken that same night, but it was the last one that sent a bolt of fear through him.

It showed the two of them outside the door to their Silver Lake home. Chris was looking up at him with that look—the one that always meant the evening was going to end very soon in bed. In fact he seemed to recall they hadn’t even made it past the living room that night. It was a very private look and David hated to know that someone was watching that moment.

“He must have parked across the street,” he managed to say.

“He was right there.”

Martinez reached for the pictures before David could drop them, but David wouldn’t release them. As he jerked them back, several slips of fl imsy paper fell out and fl uttered to the wet balcony. He stooped down to grab them.

He stared at them, at fi rst puzzled, then with a knot of fear growing in his gut. The fi rst page was a tax assessor’s map of Chris and his home on Cove Avenue. There was a full fl oor plan and the dimensions of the house Chris had inherited from his grandmother years before.

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With stiff fi ngers he fl ipped out the next pages. The fi rst was his birth certifi cate, the one without a father listed. The second one was Chris’s.

The fi nal page was the AKC registration the breeder had given them for Sergeant.

Martinez awkwardly patted his partner’s shoulder. David brushed his hand off. “He’s stalking us.” He held the papers up.

“This is just to show himself what he can do.”

“Fucking power trip,” Martinez said. “We’re onto the scumbag now. He won’t get anywhere near you or Chris.”

David slapped the papers and photos against the palm of his hand. “But what was he doing watching us
then
? This is before we caught the Scott squeal. He had no way to know I’d be put on that case—even if you assume he’d already planned to kill her then!”

“So what are you thinking?”

“I don’t know.” David brushed droplets of rain off his shaggy head and rubbed his face wearily. “But there’s something else going on here. I just don’t know what yet.”

§ § § §

Once they were satisfi ed there was nothing else in the apartment they could use to bolster their growing case, they returned to the station. David wanted to talk to the technician who had taken in Adam’s computer.

He headed to the overcrowded room that had been given over to the techies when computers fi rst started making inroads into police work.

A portly Anglo, who barely looked eighteen, hunched over the equipment from Adam’s apartment. His name tag said Brad Dortlander. He glanced up at David’s approach.

“This yours?”

“Find anything interesting?”

“Defi ne interesting.”

198 P.A. Brown

David wished he had Chris there. He might have had more luck communicating with this guy.

“The guy who owned this may have killed his mother,” David said. “He also tried to kill... a cop.” David almost said “me,” but decided to keep it from seeming personal. “You should probably be aware the guy’s supposed to be some kind of computer genius.

So I don’t know what you can expect.”

Brad’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah?” He tried to sound casual, but he’d never make it in Hollywood. “Think it might be booby-trapped?”

David looked askance at the seemingly innocuous machine on Brad’s desk. “Booby-trapped? What does that mean?”

“Oh, nothing like you’re thinking. It’s not going to blow up or anything.” Brad snorted and David almost expected milk to shoot out of his nose. “Booby-trapping is an automatically executed shell command that runs whenever a suspicious connection attempt is made to the system. Someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing will trigger a self-destruct command and wipe the hard drive before they know what hit them.”

“Anything you can do to counter it?”

“I’ll clone it onto one of our own systems, then generate another SUID. Don’t worry, sir. If there’s something on there, I’ll get it off, without touching or altering the original fi les.”

David got that Dortlander would keep the fi les safe in case of a trial. Other than that he didn’t have a clue what Dortlander was saying, and he wasn’t about to ask for a translation.

Instead he nodded sagely. “Good. Ah, carry on, then. You’ll let me know as soon as you fi nd something?”

“What? Oh sure.” But David could tell Dortlander was already a thousand miles away. Probably buried deep inside the silicon computer chips or copper wires, the same place Chris went at times.

David left him to his incomprehensible activities and rejoined Martinez in a world he was far more comfortable with.

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Martinez looked smug as he sat with his phone tucked under his chin. He put the phone down when David came in.

“What did you fi nd?” David asked.

“Our Adam was born in Florida. Jacksonville to be exact.

Only the name is Adnan Behnia Baruq,” Martinez said. “Mother’s name on the birth certifi cate is Nancy Ellen Baruq, nee Scott. His father is Yousef Baruq.”

“And where is Yousef now?”

“Still looking.”

David sat down and swiveled his chair around to face Martinez.

“So Nancy Scott marries Yousef, presumably converts to Islam and they have a son, Adam. Or Adnan.”

“Sounds about right.”

“So what happens? How do Nancy and Adnan end up in California with Nancy a devout, church-going Catholic?”

“I’m guessing however it happened, Adnan wasn’t happy about the change.”

“Did his father share that sentiment?” David wondered. He pulled a pen out of the chipped mug on his desk and began rhythmically tapping it against his knee. “Something’s not adding up here.”

“Gotta be rough on a guy, losing his wife and kid and then she goes and twists the knife by dumping on his religion, too.”

“Why don’t you start with the records offi ces in Florida? I’ll start looking around here.” David scribbled something on a scrap of paper. “Yousef? How do you spell that?”

Sunday, 7:45 pm, USC County General, State Street, Los Angeles
Chris awoke with a start and swore when he saw the darkness pressing against the barred window of his room. He’d fallen asleep again.

200 P.A. Brown

When he tried to move it was as though every muscle in his body chose that precise moment to seize up. He groaned.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

His doctor’s dry voice was the last thing he wanted to hear. But there she was, leaning over him. He saw her wandering gaze fl ick toward the bedside table where he had stashed the Blackberry and the morphine tablets he had stopped taking.

“Christopher, you really have to understand what your body is going through.”

“How’s that, doc?” Chris was in no mood for Finder’s word games. He just wished she’d go away so he could rest his eyes for a couple of minutes. Then he could get ready for what he had to do.

“More than anything your body needs rest. Complete, uninterrupted rest.”

Abruptly she reached over and pulled the drawer open.

Seconds later the small brown pills sat in the palm of her hand.

A nurse entered behind her. Finder waved her forward. The nurse inserted a syringe into the IV line.

“What’s that?”

“Just something to help you rest. For your own good, Chris.”

“I hate it when people tell me something is for my own good.”

“Yeah, I agree. Sucks, doesn’t it?” She used a penlight to examine his eyes. She rested her fi ngertips under his rigid jaw.

“You’re too tense. If you don’t want to do something for your sake, how about doing it for David?”

“You’re not giving me much choice, are you?” he managed.

Her eyes widened. “Hey, I think you’re right.”

“And you call yourself a doctor.” His eyes began to slide shut as the sedative hit him. “Someone ought to take away your stethoscope.”

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“Better men than you have tried.”

Sunday, 8:45 pm, USC County General, State Street, Los Angeles
David stared at the sleeping fi gure. Light from the hallway fell across Chris’s face, which, despite the yellowing bruises and swollen fl esh, looked almost angelic.

David smiled. Angelic and Chris weren’t usually two concepts he would have put together, but he looked so peaceful... David reached out tentatively to stroke the hand that lay atop the covers.

“We’ll get through this, hon,” David murmured. Funny how he never felt comfortable using those kinds of endearments to Chris’s face. The words always seemed to stick in his throat. “Not much of a husband, am I? Can’t be here for you—”

“Oh, I think Chris knows what he means to you,” a voice came through the open door.

David turned. It was Chris’s doctor.

“Chris seems like a pretty sharp cookie.” Finder entered the room and stood beside him. “He doesn’t miss much.”

David studied her. “You don’t either.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder. “He’s going to be fi ne.”

“Is that your professional opinion?”

“In my professional opinion Christopher is a pain in the ass.”

“Can’t argue there—”

“D-David?” Chris said from the bed.

“Yeah, it’s me,” David kept his voice light. “Who did you expect?”

Monday, 7:40 am, USC County General, State Street, Los Angeles
David still sat in the molded plastic chair he had taken last night. His head tilted back and his mouth had fallen open in sleep. One hand lay across the bed, still holding Chris’s hand.

Chris drank him in. Never had David looked more beautiful to him than at that moment.

A cart rattled in the hall. David sat up with a grunt. His eyes fl uttered open and met Chris’s.

David stretched and Chris heard something pop. He winced in sympathy. David fl ashed him a wan smile.

“I’m getting too old for this.” David pressed his hands into the small of his back and straightened to more popping sounds.

“Think I can fi nd some coffee around here?”

“Bring me a latte if this place is civilized enough to produce them.”

David did one better. He’d brought the desired drinks and two blueberry muffi ns.

Chris attacked his with fervor. He caught David’s look. “Hey, how many days of hospital food am I expected to endure?”

“You’ll survive.”

“You didn’t see what they served for supper last night.”

David reluctantly took his leave, promising he would return that evening if he could. Chris watched him stride through the door and missed him even before he was out of sight.

204 P.A. Brown

Monday, 10:20 am, Northeast Community Police Station, San Fernando
Road, Los Angeles

David tracked down Brad, the technician. He was in the same spot, hunched over Adnan’s computer and one similar. As far as David could tell the guy hadn’t even changed clothes. He was studying a map of the city’s center.

“So, was it booby-trapped?” David asked.

“Yes, matter of fact it was.” From his smug expression David deduced the traps had been easy to beat. At least by this guy’s standards. “I intercepted the shell command before it could run and killed it.” He patted the off-white box like it was a puppy.

“She gave it all up to me after that. Though from what I can see the guy did regular clean-up, so there’s no way to tell how much he already deleted.”

“I thought deleted fi les could be recovered.”

“This guy used a high end data scrubber on his deleted fi les.

What is there is pretty recent.”

“Guess we surprised him before he had a chance to clean it off completely,” David said. “So, what exactly did you fi nd?”

“He had several map searches saved. All like this. Guess he wanted to make sure he could fi nd his way around downtown.”

“What else?” David asked, ignoring the guy’s feeble attempt at humor. “He must have been protecting more than a couple of maps.”

“This guy spent a lot of time at hacker sites. He’s no wizard, but he’s defi nitely not a script kiddie, either. It looks like he tried to fi nd what’s left of the Legion of Doom and the Masters of Deception, but I doubt that got him anywhere. Those guys are history.”

“Talk English, okay?”

Brad shrugged. “Sure, whatever. This guy’s got some very interesting tools on this baby,” he patted the computer again,

“some I’ve only ever heard of. Plus I found some half-fi nished L.A. BYTES
205

code he’s been splicing together; I’m still trying to fi gure that out.”

“Code for what?”

“That’s what I’m trying to work out. It’s not done and the guy didn’t do any documentation, so I’m sorting through it line by line, but it looks like a pretty sophisticated worm he’s got going there. He’s not just launching any simple SYN attacks with this.”

“A worm? They can spread, right?”

“That’s the whole idea. Worms are self-replicating. Release one of those babies in the wild and it’ll jump from system to system until there’s nothing left. Pure havoc.” Brad sounded impressed. “Of course most worms aren’t that well written. They all pretty well fi zzle after hitting a few thousand machines. So far Confi cker has been about the most successful one. It nailed upward of fi fteen million machines.”

“Fifteen
million
?” David asked.

“Out of billions of potential targets, that’s small stuff. Just imagine how bad it could get if you could infect hundreds of millions of machines. Especially if you start bringing down the major dot com sites.”

“What about the stuff this guy is writing?” David waved at the computer on Brad’s cluttered desk. “Is it good enough?”

“Haven’t fi nished deconstructing it yet. It’s good, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t major fl aws in it. You usually only spot those when you run tests.”

“How would you test something like that?”

Brad grinned. “Let it loose and watch what happens.”

“Great.”

Brad shrugged. “Not many hackers have access to test labs.”

He swiveled around toward David. “You might be interested to know that your guy here had a second computer, probably a laptop.”