Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (12 page)

Turner said, “We’ve got a long list of people to talk to.”

Molton said, “If you can drag yourself away from Fenwick’s literary career, you should get to it.” He turned to Fenwick, “I heard you were quite good last night. Congratulations.” He marched off.

Carruthers walked up to them. Turner thought the young detective beamed more brightly than anyone had a right to at work on a Saturday morning. Carruthers clapped Turner on the shoulder and said, “I hear you’re going to do what’s right.”

“What’s that?” Turner asked.

Carruthers lowered his voice and leaned down to whisper in his ear, “Be a character witness for Dwayne.”

Turner was furious that this news had already hit the cop gossip line. He was even more angry because he assumed Smythe had spread it around. He also realized that Smythe had done it deliberately to push him into a corner. Very carefully he said, “Randy, I don’t want you to come near me for the next six months.” Carruthers frowned, his shoulders slumped, and he shuffled off.

“What the hell was that all about?” Fenwick asked.

Turner told him about last night’s discussion with Smythe. He finished, “I got a plea from an incompetent creep followed by years of listening to poetry, all in one night.”

“But it was my poetry, so that should have made it all right.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me you wrote poetry?”

For one of the few times in Turner’s memory, Fenwick spoke quietly and almost modestly. “I’m not ashamed. It’s just a little strange.”

“No stranger than a lot of the other stuff you’ve told me. Are you afraid people will think you’re effete, less studly, or maybe gay because you write poetry?”

“I’ve got a tough guy, masculine image. Admittedly an overweight, tough guy, masculine image, but poetry does not fit in with that. In general we don’t like people who are different, and a lot of cops would make of fun anyone who writes poetry. I’ve got a big ego and can take a lot of razzing, but somehow I felt less secure about the poetry.”

“I’m your partner. We’re friends.”

“I know. I guess I should have said something.”

“Then again, if you’d said something sooner, I might have been stuck going to more poetry readings.”

“Consider yourself lucky.”

Turner said, “I can live with that. I admit, I know nothing about poetry. I think you did a fine reading. Let’s leave it at that.”

“I guess,” Fenwick said. “What are you going to do about Smythe?”

“Shoot him or hire a great flaming dragon to take him away.”

“Both excellent suggestions. You know, he’s got you by the balls. If you lie, you sell yourself out. If you tell the truth, you sell him out. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

“I don’t think it’s going to come to anything very dramatic.”

“It might,” Fenwick said. “There’s nothing you can say that would be neutral?”

“Neutral is good,” Turner said. “but I’d just rather not be involved at all.”

“You may not have much choice.”

“There’s nothing to be done about it now. What time is our appointment with Werberg and our computer guy?”

“We’ve got fifteen minutes to make it.”

Before they left, they procured the pictures of Lenzati and Werberg they’d asked for the night before. They also called Lenzati’s accounting firm. Because it was Saturday, it took more than a few calls, but they got through and arranged for a meeting later that day.

Dylan Micetic, the department computer expert, met them at the Lenzati house at 9:00 as scheduled. As they entered, Turner asked, “You have any luck with that code?”

“Code as in computer language?” Micetic asked.

“Don’t give me that computer gobbledygook,” Fenwick snarled. “We mean code as in secret spy codes written in ciphers. The rest of us know what a secret code is. Just because your over-educated ass wants to—”

“Wait,” Turner said.

Fenwick stopped.

Turner said, “I understand the harangue. Let’s get on with it.”

Micetic said, “I’ve learned very little. It has at least seven different encryptions. It’s the most sophisticated encryption scheme I’ve ever seen.”

“Speaking of sophisticated,” Turner said, “I got another one of those strange messages on my computer at my desk.” He explained.

“You have one of those new high-powered computers,” Micetic said.

“Supposed to be the fastest in the department,” Turner said.

“And they’re hooked up to everything, which means they’re vulnerable to everything,” Micetic said. “I’ll look at it again later.”

At that moment, Werberg showed up. He had his lawyer, Claud Vinkers, with him.

Before they started on the computers, Turner said, “Tell me about the late night parties Mr. Lenzati had.”

“I know nothing of such parties,” Werberg said.

Fenwick rubbed his hands together. “Excellent. A blatant lie. Our first big one of the case.” He clamped a huge paw on Werberg’s shoulder. “Ya see, we’ve got a witness that saw people, individuals and in groups, here late, and you, you poor sap, you were seen and identified as being part of that crowd. Blatant lies whet my appetite. They cheer me up. They make life worth living. They make me think you are a much better suspect than you were even five minutes ago.”

Turner was dying to mutter that just about anything whetted Fenwick’s appetite. He kept quiet.

Werberg said, “I came to his house late a few times for small get togethers. That isn’t a crime.”

“Then why lie about it?”

Werberg looked confused but kept silent. Turner and Fenwick waited. Silence was most often the detective’s friend. Most people couldn’t stand to let silence build. Werberg kept mum. After several drawn out moments, his lawyer asked, “Did you want to get to work on the computer programs?”

“How could Lenzati work after partying all night?” Turner asked.

“Same as you,” Werberg said. “Same as anybody. We worked every minute from the time we were both twelve years old until we sold our first company in our twenties. All those years, when we weren’t in school, we were working. Neither of us had a life. We were the ultimate computer nerds. We reveled in being different and the possibility of being rich. We had a goal, and we met it beyond our wildest expectations. We’ve more than earned the right to play and party.”

“Who was he partying and playing with Thursday night and Friday morning?” Turner asked.

“I have no idea. I wasn’t there. He didn’t need to check in with me. Did you want to go over this computer stuff or not? I’ve got to get to our offices today. Craig’s loss is a tragedy, but I’ve got to do damage control before the stock market opens Monday.”

“Do you know which properties he owned in the city?”

“I have no idea. He invested in real estate. I invested most of my profits in precious metals and long term municipal bonds.”

The five of them entered the computer room. “What projects was he working on?” Turner asked.

Werberg said, “We have a bunch of different projects. Probably the most important is trying to create artificial intelligence. That’s in these files here.” He began inserting CDs in the disk drives of two of the computers. Werberg pointed to several sets of gibberish on the screen. “All these are programs for that.”

“What do they mean by artificial intelligence?” Turner asked.

“A machine that works on its own,” Werberg said.

Fenwick said, “No matter how sophisticated a machine, won’t it all simply be a matter of open and closed, on and off? No matter how fast the thing goes, it will simply be programmed. How can you program a machine to do something for which there would be no program? Why wouldn’t it just shut off? How could it go beyond what it is programmed to do?”

Turner asked, “That’s what people are really working on?”

“How much of this do you want me to show you?” Werberg asked. “I can show you mathematical formulas and programming language, but I don’t see how that would help your case.”

“We’re not sure what’s going to help or not help,” Turner said. “If we’re going to examine what competitors might be interested in stealing, or be willing to kill for, we need to know what he was doing.”

“Another big project at computer companies is coming up with new operating systems. That’s always hot. Whoever develops the best and newest and fastest system can always make a ton of money.”

“Show us that,” Fenwick said. Werberg inserted more disks and called up more unintelligible data.

“Is he faking this?” Fenwick asked Micetic.

“Not that I can tell. I can only follow about half of this. I’m awed. I wish I had time to study it all.”

“I would rather not have him study it, period,” Werberg said. “These are industrial secrets.”

“He’s going to study everything,” Fenwick said. “You’re going to explain it to him. This is a murder investigation. We need to know everything.”

“Did you ever have trouble with hackers?” Fenwick asked.

“You mean crackers. Never,” Werberg said.

Fenwick chortled. “Another lie.”

Vinkers interrupted, “I don’t believe such dispargements are helpful. Mr. Werberg is being as cooperative as possible.”

Fenwick subsided for the moment. Turner said, “One of your employees told us about Eddie Homan, the computer hacker.”

“Oh,” Werberg said. “Who told? No one was supposed to.”

“Someone did and we know,” Turner said. “So tell us about him.”

“Some people were against hiring crackers, Rian the most. She’s probably the one who told you.” The detectives said nothing. He continued, “But even the government is hiring them to develop safeguards. In Homan’s case I was wrong, but it wasn’t a big deal. We’ve always had security in place. With broadband becoming more extensively used, everybody is scrambling to improve industrial safeguards.”

After more than an hour of poring over mostly incomprehensible data, Turner pulled the encrypted document they’d found yesterday out of his folder.

“What’s this?” Turner asked.

Werberg barely glanced at it. “I have no idea. Which file was it in?”

Turner’s cop instinct told him the guy was lying. Micetic began moving the pointer to a document file. Turner stopped him. “We want to know what it means. The computer programs are complicated and might be tough to understand, but this is in a secret code.”

“I have no idea what that document says.”

“We’re going to find out,” Fenwick said. “When we finish decoding it, I hope it has nothing to do with you, because if it does I will become mightily suspicious.”

“I didn’t kill my friend.”

“We need that list of personal acquaintances.”

Werberg rapidly typed at the keyboard. Three names appeared on the screen.

“This is it?” Turner asked.

“Other than those we worked with, this is everybody I know of. Neither of us went out much.”

“Except for late night parties,” Fenwick said.

“We worked,” Werberg said. “That’s what we did mostly. We didn’t do a lot of socializing.”

Turner said, “We were told Mr. Lenzati often appeared in public with attractive women.”

“Yes.”

“Who were they?” Turner asked.

“I have no idea.”

Turner pointed at the list on the screen. “Who are these people?”

“Old friends. People from the old company who decided not to stick with it when we sold it.”

“Were they angry about your selling?”

“Not after we explained the deal. Anyone who had worked for us for five years or more was guaranteed a salary for ten years, no matter what they did. Along with that, they received stock options in the new company. They were very rich and very secure.”

“Where is his personal address book?” Fenwick asked.

“His Palm Pilot? I have no idea.”

“Who is handling the funeral arrangements?”

“I am,” the lawyer said.

“Why not some member of his family?”

“His will specifically states that I am to take care of it.”

Werberg knew nothing more that was helpful. He and his lawyer left. The detectives turned to Dylan Micetic. “Anything he was telling us that was obviously wrong?” Fenwick said.

Micetic waved at all the computer disks. “They were geniuses. When I say that, I’m not just making a compliment. This stuff is far beyond my experience.”

“Who can we get who would understand it?”

“You probably can’t. This is the cutting edge of computer technology. If there is something beyond this, I don’t know about it. I’ve never heard of a lot of this stuff. I thought I was pretty smart. I
am
pretty smart about computers.” He gave a rueful shrug. “I’m willing to admit my shortcomings in light of what I’ve seen here. I’d love to work for this guy—it’s great stuff.”

Fenwick said, “Before we drown in admiration for a possible murderer, can you give us anything on this code?”

Micetic picked up the paper and gazed at it. “This I will be able to figure out. I did my graduate thesis on encryption. But it will take a while.”

Turner asked, “Even if they were geniuses, you’ll be able to figure it out?”

“If I don’t, I can resign.”

“We need to make more copies,” Turner said. “Maybe we can get other people working on it.”

“Sure.” Micetic tried to call up the program on the computer. He couldn’t retrieve it. “I don’t understand it,” Micetic said. “It should be here. I didn’t erase it. I know I didn’t.”

“Computers screw up all the time,” Fenwick said.

“I know exactly what I did. I didn’t screw it up. It should be here.” Micetic worked for five minutes, but he couldn’t call it up.

“How can it be gone?” Turner asked.

“Somebody came in here and erased it,” Micetic said. “Computers don’t erase things all by themselves.”

“Mine does,” Fenwick said.

Micetic said, “It’s usually someone who isn’t good with computers who screws something up. I’m telling you, someone erased it.”

Fenwick said, “Computer age fuckups drive me nuts.”

Micetic said, “The impression I have is that any kind of fuckups drive you nuts.”

Fenwick muttered, “That’s part of my devastating charm.”

They asked the local police district to check with the beat cops who had guarded the scene. In a few minutes they learned that no one had been permitted into the mansion.