Part 14 (1/2)

She smiled, thinking of the way Lei charged her cases. She felt the stiff unlocking of her frozen muscles as she moved and knew that minutes she spent exercising would enable her to work for hours more.

The laptop had a pa.s.sword. She dragged another program over from one of the other screens and set it to cracking the pa.s.sword. While that was working, she carried her water bottle to the cooler, filled it up, and went to a quiet corner of the room. Got out her weighted jump rope and did cardio. She ignored the frequent glances from Bateman, whom she knew wanted to catch her eye and engage her in conversation or, worse yet, give her a compliment. She could see the words bouncing around the little agent's head like a conversation bubble, and she just didn't have the mental or emotional s.p.a.ce in her head to deal with his crush.

Back at her cubicle, she stowed the rope and checked Betsy's computer-pa.s.sword was cracked. She sat on the rubber ball and dove in.

She was able to see that Betsy had an account with DyingFriends by her traffic patterns, but Betsy had deleted her cookies. On the site itself, her account came up with a 404 User Not Found.

The system admin had beaten her to it again and deleted Betsy's account.

”d.a.m.n,” Sophie muttered, realizing as she did so that her eyes were sore and gritty from overuse. She was going to have to keep going with the ShastaM ruse, and she was getting tired of it.

Perhaps Betsy's e-mail would have something useful. She surfed through the e-mail using keywords ”suicide” ”death” ”ALS” and didn't find anything of note. Also on the hard drive, and just as sad and devastating typed as it had been in the young woman's handwriting, was a typed practice copy of her suicide note. It was dated the same day she'd placed the order for the nightgown, two weeks before the day she'd actually taken her life..

Something had prompted her decision on that day.

Frustrated, Sophie stood up and heard the distinctive growl of her stomach.

”You sound hungry,” Bateman said from behind her. ”Want to get a bite to eat down at the cafeteria?”

”No, thanks,” Sophie said. ”I brought something from home.” She didn't turn her head, didn't smile. He took himself off, and she felt guilty relief.

She logged back into her DyingFriends e-mail on the site, and this time there was a new e-mail invitation for ShastaM: ”DyingFriends.com is pleased to invite you to the deepest level of commitment and sharing available on the site. Read and accept Agreements to enter.”

She read on. This security layer was even stricter about not talking about the site, disclosing things you'd seen or ”partic.i.p.ated in,” and it required a background check. The consent form for the background check was handily provided.

Sophie paused. Fortunately, she had a clean and complete ident.i.ty and background in place ready for ShastaM's fake social security number. She'd antic.i.p.ated that at some point, DyingFriends was going to do its own vetting of prospective members. She uploaded the consent, made sure all her blocker programs that hid her computer's true ident.i.ty and location were in place, and hit Accept.

Sophie knew the drill by now. Nothing more would happen until the system admin had reviewed her.

She got out her lunch from home, microwaved it, and while it was in the oven, looked at the clock-it was already five p.m. She took the vegetable curry out, sat back down at her station with the bowl, and opened the gallery of suicide photos again.

It didn't matter what time it was. The only people she wanted for company were the unnamed dead. Their faces, crying for names, crowded her mind.

Chapter 23.

Lei took a shower, towel-dried and scrunched her curls, and got into a fresh FBI ”uniform.” She was sitting at the dining room table with her Glock taken apart for cleaning when the dogs let her know Kamuela and Ching were there.

Kamuela had come in alone. She looked past him to the car, where his partner was working a computer on the console. ”Told him I'd only be a minute,” Kamuela said.

”Thanks for the privacy. Which statement do you want first?” She led him into the cottage. She cued well-mannered Keiki to sit and give him a sniff while Angel bounced around, yapping. She shushed the little dog by picking her up. ”Something to drink?”

”No, thanks. I do have to keep an eye on the time. I'll take the statements on tape, if you don't mind.” He set a handheld tape recorder on the table between them. Lei sat down and kept her face neutral, stifling anxiety-this was protocol.

”Sure. Which one do you want first?”

”Let's start with the one about the Bozeman murder.” It was the first time Lei had heard the name of the a.s.sa.s.sin. She was silent, stroking Angel's head, as Kamuela stated the date, the time, their location, and their names. He looked up at Lei, gave a nod. ”Tell me how you came to dial Bozeman's disposable cell number.”

Lei told him, including the impulse decision to try to make contact with someone who had known her deceased grandmother and how she'd come to have the number.

”So you did not know whose number you were calling?”

”No. I was affected by nostalgia and the message the number was written on. It was an impulse decision.” It felt odd to be so personal and truthful about something so dangerous.

”And was there any other reason you might have called the number?”

”No.” Was he fis.h.i.+ng for the Kwon matter?

”How do you think your grandmother had in her possession the number of a man who has killed at least four people that we know of?”

Lei felt her heart beating with heavy thuds. She looked at Kamuela; his eyes were opaquely brown.

”I have no idea.” She was able to say it with conviction. She really did have no idea.

”Thank you for your cooperation, Special Agent Texeira.” He punched off. Lei exhaled, and Keiki came to lean against her leg, her eyes worried.

”That's a beautiful dog,” Kamuela said. ”Have you had her long?”

”I've had Keiki five years. Since I was a patrol officer on the Big Island. This little girl, I'm just dog sitting for an extended period.”

”So you started off in uniform?”

”Yeah. Worked my way to detective, did my degree in criminal justice on the job at UH Hilo. Caught some heavy cases, got some attention for it, and Marcella was the one to recruit me for the FBI.” She'd told Kamuela her darkest secrets but not even her basic background. ”I'd like to get the other statement out of the way, the one about Woo. Did you guys find anything in the house? Because I need it, if you did. It's an active investigation.”

”Into what, exactly?”

”A website and a.s.sisted suicide.” Lei told him about DyingFriends and where they were in the investigation. ”Did you find a note in the house?”

”No. So either Woo's decision was a spontaneous one, or maybe he accidentally fell in?”

”Didn't look like it. He really let that walker go with a push at the top of the bridge, looked down at the water for a minute, then just keeled in headfirst. After I fished him out, he said it should have been his choice to end his life, so it wasn't an accident.”

”We didn't find anything about DyingFriends either.”

”You wouldn't. They're cagey at the deeper levels on the site. I wonder if Woo just didn't have anyone to leave a suicide note for. He said he was estranged from his family when we first interviewed him.”

On that sobering thought, Kamuela set up the tape recorder and she made her statement about seeing Woo apparently fall and how she'd come to rescue him. ”There is an active investigation ongoing regarding a series of suspicious suicides, and the FBI was keeping an eye on Woo for his safety.”

Kamuela turned off the tape recorder, stood up. ”I look forward to putting this whole Bozeman thing behind us. I just want to find his killer. I don't plan to hunt down all the *clients' he hit targets for unless my chief directs me to, and I don't know if it's even possible. Your number was one of the only ones on his phone. How he got his jobs, I haven't been able to determine. So unless some new evidence turns up, it's one of those cases where it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Lei started at the detective's use of the familiar phrase. ”Very true,” she said. ”When Stevens and I work out our long-distance issues, we'd love to do something with you and Marcella.”

”Sounds like a plan. I'll call you if I need anything more.” The entire Kwon situation lay between them unspoken, and Lei hoped it stayed that way-at least until she found out how her grandmother had had Bozeman's number in her keepsake box.

She followed Kamuela out, waved to Ching just as her phone rang again. It was Ken.

”How'd that go?”