MIND FIELDS Read online

  They pulled up to park on a side street near Lexington Market, one of the few with street parking.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Hank said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, then handed it to Richie.

  “What’s this? Richie asked as he took it.

  Hank smiled. “Just take a look. I want to see if you can figure it out.”

  “Oh, Christ, Hank. Is this another one of your stupid puzzles?”

  “Well...yeah, but...”

  Richie stuffed it in his pocket. “Maybe later, man.”

  “I think you should look at it now, Richie. It’s...”

  “There she is,” Richie interrupted as he spotted Sandi in the driver’s side mirror. She had parked a few spaces away and was just getting out of her car.

  “Doc!” he called out the window.

  Sandi lifted her hand to shade her eyes from the sun and peered into the car. “Well, right on time, Detective.”

  “Listen, Doc, the burritos are on me today, but before we eat, I’ve got to show you something first. Hop in.”

  Sandi stooped down and peered into the car. Hank smiled an annoying kind of smile with one eyebrow raised, contorting his face in a way that he mistakenly thought was attractive to someone of the opposite sex. The usual response from women was either one of disgust or laughter, but Hank couldn’t help himself.

  “I don’t know, Detective. My mother always told me that I should never get in a car with strangers, and you two look pretty strange to me.” She held back a giggle as she glanced at Hank again.

  Richie looked over at his partner. “Ah, he’s harmless. He only looks annoying.”

  Sandi laughed and got in the back seat.

  Richie motioned to Hank. “This is my partner, Hank Holiday.” He nodded toward Sandi. “This is Dr. Sandra Fletcher.”

  “Ma’am,” he said.

  “You’re the one I talked to at the station, aren’t you?”

  Hank was impressed that she recognized his voice from a single word. “That would be me.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Hank nodded.

  “Look, Doc.” Richie said. “I did that phone search I told you about.”

  “And?”

  “And there were no phone calls between BNI or Dr. Hingston and your lab at Hopkins other than the ones that you told me about, but...”

  “But what?”

  “Well, I think you’d better look for yourself.”

  Richie put the microdisc into the car computer. The encryption was quickly deciphered and the search results came up on the screen. Sandi peered over the front seat, trying to focus on the screen through the glare of sunlight pouring in through the windows.

  “Here,” Richie said. He activated the window tinters and the car darkened slightly. “That help?”

  “Much better. Thanks.” She read the data incredulously. “Jesus! No way! This can’t be right.”

  “Computers don’t lie, Doc.”

  “Yeah, well they can be programmed to lie. There’s no way those uplinks came from my computer. Are you implying that I sent that data to BNI? My own data?”

  “Unless someone else was using your computer every Saturday morning at two AM.”

  Sandi looked at him, disgusted. “Christ, you know about Guy, don’t you? You checked me out and learned about my boyfriend…excuse me, my live-in lover, right?”

  “Look, Doc, you’re the one that asked me to...”

  “I didn’t ask you to pry into my personal life. Who I choose to share my bed with is none of your damned business.” She reached for the door handle.

  “Yes you did,” Richie said.

  She stopped and looked at him. “Yes I did what?”

  “You did ask me to pry into your personal life. Somebody stealing data off of your computer is about as personal as it gets.”

  Sandi was offended, but it was hard to disagree. She flopped back in to the seat. “Besides, there’s no way Guy could have done it. I don’t give my access codes to anyone, not even my live-in lover,” she acerbically directed the last three words at Kincade. “And believe me, Guy may be sweet, but he’s no genius when it comes to computers.”

  “I don’t know,” Hank said, “I hear he aced his computer courses at AU.”

  Sandi looked surprised. “Computer courses? Guy hears the word keyboard and thinks piano. He doesn’t know a hard drive from a four-wheel drive. What computer courses?”

  “He minored in computers at AU,” Richie said. “Didn’t he ever tell you?”

  Sandi sat silently, wondering what else Guy may have been keeping from her all this time. He was just a guitar player, for God’s sake…a lover, nothing but a harmless lover.

  Richie turned off the computer. “Why don’t we go have lunch?”

  Hank agreed quickly. They coaxed Sandi out of the car, and headed for Pedro’s. Trace McKnight watched intently through a pair of binoculars from the far end of the street.

  “I don’t get it,” Sandi said. “It just doesn’t make any sense. My work is always the farthest thing from Guy’s mind.” Sandi always felt wonderful when she was with Guy. He was good at romance, but in her heart she knew that it would never feel like anything more. He never showed the least bit of interest in her work. Even when he feigned interest to try and be nice, she could tell that his mind was elsewhere. “He wouldn’t understand my work enough to sell it to someone at BNI even if he wanted to. Besides, there’s no way he could get into my files. Computer minor or not, I’m telling you he’s no computer whiz.”

  “I didn’t make the facts, Doc, I just found them. Someone made those calls. If it wasn’t him and it wasn’t you, who else could it have been?”

  Hank watched her closely. She was either a great liar or a really bad judge of character. In either case, she was in way over her head. Guys like JT Anderson and James O’Grady were not the kind of people you’d want to mess with. Hank was sure that her hands were dirty, but he felt sorry for her anyway. This could not end well for Dr. Sandra Fletcher.

  “Maybe it was Anderson’s henchmen. They could have falsified the records to make it look like I was sending information to them...you know, to make me look bad.”

  “And frame themselves for the theft of data that belonged to Johns Hopkins University? I don’t think so,” Richie said. “You may have done the work, but it wasn’t yours to give even if you wanted to. They would be implicating themselves along with you.”

  None of them had an answer. Hank was sure it was Sandi who was the perpetrator, Richie was just as sure that it had to be Guy, and Sandi was sure that she was being framed. They walked quietly into the market and ordered lunch.

  “Mind if I come back to your place and have a look at your computer, Doc?” Richie asked nonchalantly as he took a sip of Coke. “Your internal Internet log will tell us whether those calls really came from your PC or if those records were falsified.”

  “Yeah, why didn’t I think of that,” she said. “I always shut my PC down when I go to bed. Even if somebody tried to route those calls through my computer from another location, they wouldn’t have been able to do it. My PC is always off at night. Those records had to be forged. I’ll take you there right after lunch. Sam can handle things at the lab today. I want to get to the bottom of this mess.”

  They hurried through their lunch and walked back to the cars. The three of them arrived at Unit Five first. Richie had decided to ride with Sandi back to her place. Hank needed to get back to work.

  “Nice to meet you, Doc.” Hank extended his hand. “Take care of my boy Richie here.” What he really meant was I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. Watch out, Richie.

  “Don’t worry, Hank,” Richie knew exactly what his friend was thinking.
“We’ll be careful.”

  Hank got in the car. Richie and Sandi waved and turned to walk over to Sandi’s car. Hank pulled out the key and slipped it into the ignition. He was just about to turn it, when...

  “Hold up, Hank,” he heard Richie yell. Kincade tapped on the window. “Hold up a sec. The doc here wants to have another look at that microdisc. She wants to see whether the transmissions to BNI started before or after Guy moved in.”

  Richie already knew the answer, but Sandi wanted to see it for herself. She slipped into the back seat again. Kincade opened the passenger side front door and got in. He pulled the disc out of his pocket and slipped it into the computer, which whirred on. The patrol cars were equipped with battery back-up that could run the computer for several hours. It wasn’t practical to keep the car running for hours at a time while on a stakeout.

  Sandi checked the data. Kincade was right. The transmissions started shortly after Guy moved in with her. Could she really have been so wrong about him?

  “God, maybe you’re right, Detective. Do I know how to pick ’em or what?” She felt so used.

  They got out of the car. Kincade wanted to put his arm around her shoulder and console her, but somehow he knew that was not what she wanted. They walked quietly down the sidewalk, Sandi deep in thought and Kincade watching, reading her body language. He was still pretty sure that Guy was the culprit, but he was not ready to let his guard down with the good doctor. The pieces of this puzzle hadn’t quite come together yet.

  Hank put the key in the ignition and gave it a twist. The engine roared to a start. He turned the wheels sharply to the right and eased off of the brake. As the car moved forward, the left front tire rolled over the trigger that had been set by Trace McKnight. Hank Holiday was dead before the sound of the blast reached his ears.

  Sandi and Richie were thrown forward face first into the sidewalk by the force of the explosion. They lay motionless on the pavement, not yet aware of what had just happened.

  A moment later, Kincade started to fade back into consciousness. He slowly pushed up from the concrete and glanced back at the blazing hunk of metal that had been Unit Five.

  “Hank!” he yelled hopelessly. He struggled to his feet and stumbled toward the car, but the heat forced him back. As he turned away from the car, he realized that Sandi was still laying face down on the pavement. He urged himself over to her as fast as his body could move and kneeled down next to her.

  “Doc? Doctor Fletcher?” He gently shook her shoulder.

  She slowly turned her head and looked up at him. “I’m OK,” she muttered, half-dazed. “What happened?” She hadn’t yet realized that Unit Five had gone up in flames.

  “I don’t know,” he said looking back at the car, “but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

  Sandi started to get up, and then dropped back down to her knees, holding her head.

  “You OK?”

  “Yeah. Just a bit woozy.”

  “We’d better get you to a hospital.” He wiped the blood dripping down from her forehead. “You took a pretty good blow to the head.”

  “It’s just a scrape,” she said, regaining her strength. “I’m fine.” She stood and brushed herself off. “Let’s get out of here. Whoever did this might still be around waiting to make sure the job is done.”

  “Look, Doc, whoever did this isn’t after you. They had no way of knowing that you would be going back to Hank’s car. That bomb was meant for me. Obviously the NSA was serious about keeping me away from BNI.”

  “The NSA?”

  “I’ll explain later. Look, the further away you stay from me the better.”

  “I’m not so sure of that. If this is about BNI, then I’m in this as deep as you are.”

  Richie started to protest, but it was hard to disagree.

  “At least come back to my place and help me check out the computer. If Guy is involved with this...God, I can’t believe I’m even thinking that...then I need to know about it.”

  Kincade agreed. Sandi took out her keys, but Richie stopped her before she pushed the button to unlock it.

  “I thought you said they weren’t after me.”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure. Great.” She looked at her car. “I just made my last payment on that thing.”

  “It’s probably fine, but let me get the bomb squad to check it out, OK.”

  “No argument here.” She put her right thumb and little finger to her mouth and let out a loud, shrill whistle as she waved her left arm at a passing cab. “Ready?” she said to Richie.

  He admired her grit.

  They arrived at Sandi’s house about twenty minutes later. On the way in, Richie phoned the department.

  “Where the hell are you, Kincade?”

  “Minding my own business, Chief. I’m on leave, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember. Do you?”

  “Listen, Chief, I need a favor.”

  “Richie...Hank’s dead.”

  Kincade was silent for a brief moment. It was hard to get the words out. “I know. I was there.”

  “You what?”

  “I was with him, Chief. That bomb was meant for me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Richie. You remember a guy name of Aldo Echeverria?”

  “Echeverria...Echeverria...wasn’t that some drug dealer Hank busted by accident a couple of years back?”

  “Yeah. It was the case of that auto de-chipping ring in Anne Arundel County. Hank was tracking down a rash of de-chipped cars used in petty crimes. He discovered that they were all done at this auto shop in Anne Arundel. Echeverria was the owner of the shop. Turned out he was using the cars to smuggle drugs. Hank stumbled into this department’s biggest drug bust of the decade.”

  “What’s that have to do with this? He got twelve years in the state pen, didn’t he? He should be safely locked away.”

  “I just got off the phone with an Agent James O’Grady at the NSA. Apparently, they were keeping an eye on you after your shenanigans at BNI. One of their surveillance teams spotted Echeverria messing around with Unit Five just before the explosion. Seems he just got out of the pen a couple of weeks ago and had Hank in his sights, wanted to send a message. You know how those drug runners are. They don’t forget someone who gets in their way.”

  “So where’s the weasel now?”

  “In the morgue. The NSA agent chased him down right after the bomb went off, but Echeverria resisted arrest. He took two bullets in the head.”

  Kincade thought a moment. “Sounds a little too neat to me, Chief.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “Listen, Chief. Do you think you can get a hold of that O’Grady fellow? Try and convince him that I’m minding my own business. Tell him that you talked to me and I got the message loud and clear, would you?”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course, Chief. I’m just using the free time to help out a friend, you know?”

  “Yeah, right. Listen, Richie. Watch your back.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  __

  The cab pulled into Sandi’s driveway. Kincade paid the fare and they went inside.

  “I’m telling you, you’re not going to find anything. Maybe Guy’s not being totally up front with me about everything, maybe all the sweet talk was just to get into my pants, but he’s no super sleuth. He’s got the brains of a Neanderthal, but he’s real sweet, you know?”

  “Uh huh.” Kincade was trying to be polite.

  Even Sandi doubted the words coming out of her mouth. “Even if he did want to steal the data off my computer, nobody knows my access codes,” she said while waiting for the computer to boot up. “Here we go. Let’s have a look.”

  She pulled her desk chair up
to the monitor, and Kincade looked over her shoulder. “Computer, access Internet logs. Display all uplinks initiated from this location between twelve PM and three AM for the past two years.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “I’m telling you, it’ll come up empty. Guy never goes near this thing and I’m always asleep by eleven.”

  Within a few seconds, the computer responded. “There are no entries that match the specified search criteria.”

  Sandi smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. “There, satisfied?”

  “Mind if I have a go at it?”

  Sandi shrugged her shoulders and stood up, offering the chair to Kincade. “Computer, access OS Internet log, same search criteria.”

  “Access denied.”

  “See,” he said to Sandi, “the programmers put a hidden file in the operating system that keeps a log of all Internet sites accessed from the computer. They don’t really want you to know about it, and even if you do it’s almost impossible to access.”

  “You mean they keep a record of all of my personal use and hide it from me?”

  “Yup.”

  “What for?”

  “For security reasons.”

  “Who’s security? Certainly not mine.” Sandi was brilliant, but still naive when it came to the ways of the business world. She was offended at the thought of someone recording all of the intimate details of her personal life.

  “For times like this,” Kincade said as he slipped a disc into the micro drive. He waited for the deciphering program to load.

  “Computer, access OS Internet log, same search criteria,” he repeated to the computer.

  This time the results were different. A large file several pages long came up on screen listing hundreds of Internet sites. Sandi stared wide-eyed at the list.