No Way to Die (13 page)

“Do you think it reached the point where Thomas was unfaithful to her?” I asked.

She looked down and didn’t speak for a moment. Then she looked up at me. “No, I don’t think it reached that point,” she said. I looked at her hard, but I couldn’t read her. I couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or not.

Was Thomas having an affair? With Holly? This was a new angle we’d need to investigate. Jealous lovers have been killing each other since not long after Adam and Eve showed up. But who was jealous of whom? I wasn’t prepared to press this just yet—we needed to regroup and work out a strategy for this angle before I went and said something stupid and poisoned the well with Holly. I decided to drop this line for now. I turned to Toni and nodded.

She seemed to understand instinctively that it was time to change subjects. “With all this happening, then, Holly,” Toni said, “what are your personal plans? What do you want to do? I mean, if the company loses money every month with its Division 1 products, and Katherine’s not willing to continue supporting it, what then?”

“I don’t know,” Holly said. “I guess it’s pretty much up to Katherine. I thought about trying to buy out her interests, but after I talked to John Ogden about that, I found out that I’d have to go out and raise a pretty considerable sum of money to do it.” She thought for a second, and then she added, “I guess it makes the most sense to get Katherine to allow us to sell Starfire, assuming the U.S. government will approve a buyer. Then, the company would be a lot easier to value for both of us.”

“It would probably be quite a bit more affordable with Starfire gone,” Toni added.

“That’s right.”

“Well,” Toni said, “sounds like you’ve got lots to work out.”

“I do,” Holly agreed.

Toni turned and nodded at me.

I checked my notes and tried to think of something I might have missed. “Kenny, do you have any other questions we need to ask while we’re here?”

“None,” he said. “Except to say that it looks to me like you guys have really done some groundbreaking work here. You should be proud.”

Holly smiled at him. “Thanks,” she said.

I glanced at Kenny.
You smooth-talking little devil. Very good.

It was silent for a few moments.

“Well,” I said, “I guess that wraps things up for now. We don’t need to take up any more of your time.” I stood up. “I’m very sorry about Thomas.”

She nodded. “We are, too.” She paused for a moment, and then said, “Do you really think that Thomas might have been murdered?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’d have to say that it’s too early to tell.”

* * * *

“Couple of conflicts there, don’t you think?” I said as we drove back to the office. Since Kenny had driven separately, he was patched in on the speakerphone.

“Boy, I’ll say,” Toni said. “I seem to remember Katherine saying that Thomas didn’t seem fazed by not being able to sell Starfire to MST. Holly says he was very disappointed.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Katherine said Thomas was excited to learn there was a market for Starfire, but that he didn’t want to sell to a foreign company. Now, Holly’s saying they didn’t want to sell to the U.S. government, but that Thomas
did
want to sell to MST.”

Tony then asked, “Didn’t Katherine also say that it was no problem writing the checks to support the company every quarter? Holly says that it was a cause of friction between Katherine and Thomas.”

“That’s right,” I said. “And there’s the whole thing about a potential affair,” I said. “What’s up with that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “That came as a surprise. I assumed that when you nodded at me, you wanted me to drop the line and move on?”

“Yeah, I sure did. I think we’ll need to regroup and develop a strategy to try and smoke that out. What do you think?”

“Agreed. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

“But why would Holly lie about that?” Toni asked. “To throw suspicion on Katherine?”

I thought for a second, and then said, “Most everything she said painted Katherine in a bad light.”

“Katherine’s either being grossly maligned,” Toni said, “or else she was a damn fine actress the other morning.”

“You’ve got that right,” I said.

I drove for a couple of minutes, and then said, “Kenny, good job back there. Very smooth.”

“Thanks, boss.”

“Did what Holly said make sense to you?”

“From a purely technical perspective,” he said, “yeah—I’m mostly satisfied. I mean, everything she said was correct, at least as far as I can tell—she’s way above my league in this area.” He paused, and then added, “I leave to you guys the interpretation of motive.”

“You say ‘mostly satisfied.’ Does something bother you?”

“I don’t know—maybe a little,” he answered. “Think about it. Logically, the Starfire Protocol has three basic potentials for value, as I see it. First, if you’re a government, you can use it to eavesdrop on your enemies all over the world. If they didn’t know Starfire existed, they’d never know the government was listening in.”

“And Holly said that ACS didn’t want the government to have it because they philosophically didn’t agree with the Feds having that kind of power,” Toni said.

“Right,” he said. “So the second reason Starfire could have value would be if a criminal organization got hold of it. Imagine if a group of Russian hackers got hold of Starfire. If they were careful and kept it quiet, they could siphon off billions of dollars from accounts all over the world.”

“Scary thought,” I said. “What’s the third?”

“The third potential—and the one that’s most viable,” he said, “is exactly the one Holly mentioned. It’s to prove that the current cryptology technology in use is flawed and—here’s the important part—to drive people into a new technology.”

“In other words, your one-two punch theory.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And, I might add, it’s the one Holly said they intended to employ.”

“That’s right,” I said. “So?”

“So,” he said, “my problem is that, seeing as they had only six employees, how’d they manage to let rumors sneak out? Seems to me like it should have been pretty easy to control. Or, if you look at it from the other side of the coin, the rumors that are out there might have been deliberately planted by ACS as the start of their efforts to deploy Starfire. Maybe the rumors were meant to begin to disrupt the market.”

I thought about this for a second. “But there’d be no reason to let anyone know about Starfire unless you already had an alternative technology ready to roll out,” I said. “If you let the cat out of the bag too early, you’d completely lose the element of surprise.”

“That’s right,” he said. “You’d trigger a mass exodus away from a current technology to some alternative—an alternative that you didn’t control. It makes no sense to do this. Why not wait until you had the new alternative and then use Starfire to drive the exodus in your direction?”

“Yet Holly said that they hadn’t gotten anywhere with their new encryption alternative.”

“Exactly,” Kenny said. “That’s what’s bothering me. Seems to me that they’d most likely have been working both of those angles at the same time. And I can’t see a single reason why they’d ever tell anyone about the Starfire Protocol—ever even admit to its being out there at all—and risk triggering a panic unless they already had the new technology finished and waiting.”

“As a matter of fact,” Toni said, “it seems logical that you’d introduce the new technology first. Then, to hasten its acceptance, you could drop Starfire on the world. That way, you’d have opened the gate to the corral before you started driving the cattle.”

“Maybe,” Kenny said. “And if that’s the case, at least the way Holly explained it, ACS is doing it completely backwards.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Richard was already in his office when I got in at quarter ’til eight. I figured that it was about time I got some “directional” advice, so I plopped myself into a chair across from his desk.

“So,” he said, smiling, “how’d it go?”

“Someone is being—how should I put it—less than forthright,” I said.

“I’m shocked,” he said, feigning surprise. “You mean someone’s lying to us? That never happens.”

“Yeah,Katherine Rasmussen said Thomas was happy and content. Holly says he was ‘disappointed.’ Katherine says that funding the company through its start-up period was not a problem. Holly says Thomas hated having to ask Katherine for the money. Katherine says that Thomas had a great family life. Holly says he had issues—and, it sounded like he might have even been having an affair.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time two women had differing viewpoints of the same man,” he said.

I nodded.

“So, that said, big picture. Who are your suspects?”

“Well,” I said, as I leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a second, considering this.

I looked back at him. “First,” I said, holding up a finger, “I’d have to say Holly—the jealous lover.
If
she was his lover, of course.”

“Always has to be a jealous lover,” Richard agreed.

“Next,” second finger up, “I’d have to say Katherine—the jealous wife.”

“The counter-foil.”

“Number three would be the good folks at Madoc Secured Technologies—the jilted business suitor.”

“Not usually a murder suspect, but plausible,” Richard agreed.

“Fourth would be the good folks at the NSA—the spooks—who want to keep all these cool, little decoder ring secrets to themselves.”

“Wow,” he said. “That raises the game to a whole new level, that one.”

“Anyway,” I said, “that’s just a start. How am I doing?”

“Excellent,” he said, beaming. “And don’t forget . . .”

“What?”

“It’s entirely possible that he simply killed himself.”

“Yeah, there’s that, too,” I said.

“So,” he said, “based on all that, what are your intentions?”

“You mean aside from sitting down and asking you for the answers?”

“Yes,” he said, “aside from that.”

“I guess my intentions need to be to develop a strategy for each of these scenarios. Figure out a course of action on each that will flush out answers.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know any other way to do it,” he said. “At least in my experience.” He looked at me. “Do you have a favorite theory? Is there any danger of fixation?”

This was a good question. Fixation is when you don’t know the answer to a problem, but you think you have a pretty good idea. You then buy into your own theory to the exclusion of everything else around you. Then, when it turns out your theory is wrong, you find that in your zeal to prove it, you’ve passed by the clues that could have led to the right answer. For me, this wasn’t usually a problem. “No, no fixation,” I said, laughing. “I’m totally fuzzy in all directions. All channels are still open.”

“That’s good,” he said. “I wasn’t really worried, but I figured it’s my job to keep everyone reminded about the dangers of tunnel vision.”

“True. Good advice,” I said.

It was quiet for a second, and then he said, “There is something that troubles me with this case.”

I looked at him. “There’s a lot that troubles me about it, but are you thinking of something in particular?”

“Yes, I believe so. In every possible scenario—with all these potential killers running around—if Thomas Rasmussen was murdered, someone was able to so skillfully manipulate the physical evidence in such a manner that an experienced homicide detective, an experienced medical examiner, and an experienced forensic pathologist—” he counted them off, one-two-three, on his fingers as he called them out, “—all three missed any signs that the victim might have been murdered. And these are all highly trained professionals specifically looking for any such signs. That’s extraordinary. In my fifty years in the business, I don’t think I can ever recall that happening, not when a gun’s involved. I mean, there were occasions when something might have initially been missed—some telltale sign or something. But it was always there when you went back to reexamine. That’s how you knew it was a murder and not a suicide, after all. In this case, nothing at all.”

“But you must have seen murders disguised as suicides,” I said.

“Oh, certainly. Drownings, jumpers—all kinds. Even gunshots. But the gunshot wounds leave some of the most telltale forensic evidence. The pathology and the forensics are well known. I’ve never seen a murder using a gun where the perp actually got away with it—it’s too hard to manipulate the evidence.”

“And in this case,” I said, “there’s no physical evidence that points to murder.”

“Exactly,” he said. “This being the case, if in fact Thomas was murdered, I would be inclined to say that this level of expertise would tend to rule out either Katherine Rasmussen or Holly Kenworth. Neither would be able to pull this off themselves.”

“But—” I started to say.

“But then I’d be fixating based on my own initial thoughts, when the clear fact is, either of the women could have hired someone,” he said, completing my thought.