Last shot

Chapter 60

Tim nosed out from behind a moving van and floored it, ignoring Bear, who crossed himself elaborately. Tim leaned forward, speaking loudly into the Nextel speaker-mounted on his dash. "Why don't we have a full rundown on Pierce Jameson?"

Guerrera, from the command post, sounded irritated. "We do."

"Not thorough enough."

"I told you, he's clean now."

"Then run his past associates from when he wasn't. And why the hell can't anyone get anything on the Piper? Or the Aryan Brotherhood hit men?"

Wearing a Mona Lisa smile, Bear ticked a finger at the rearview mirror.

"Shit-gotta go." Tim swore at the flashing blue lights and pulled over onto the shoulder, his aggravation mounting.

No updates of any worth from the task force. Guerrera had used the reverse directory to source the fax number tattooed across the top of Tess's letter. She'd sent it from the dental office she'd managed-no big surprise there, since Tim didn't remember seeing a fax machine in her house.

Tim clicked on his interior light to give the cop good visibility, rolled down his window, and put his hands at the ten and two, his left gripping his badge and creds. The CHP officer was fully decked out-riding gloves, white bulb of a helmet, mirrored glasses despite the hour. "Step out of the car, please, sir."

"I'm a federal officer. Take a look at the badge in my hand."

"Impressive. Now, out of the car, pal."

Tim noticed Bear's shoulders heaving silently, so he turned and squinted into the flashlight beam. Pete Krindon chuckled and slid into the backseat, unscrewing his helmet from his mop of fire-red hair. He imitated Tim's tough-guy voice, "'I'm a federal officer,'" and then he and Bear had another good laugh.

"I oughta haul you in," Tim said. "What the hell are you doing impersonating a cop?"

"Same thing you're doing impersonating one. Only you don't know who authorized me." Pete whipped off his glasses, fogged them with a breath, and polished them on his sleeve. His hand flicked inside his vinyl jacket and withdrew a flat-screen monitor the size of a school notebook.

Bear said, "Cool. I want one."

Pete shifted forward, laying the screen on the console. A paused image of Tess in Chase's G-Wagen outside The Ivy, her head bent over his BlackBerry. Pete tapped around with a stylus, smoothing out the grainy picture in waves as the software compared each pixel to its neighbors and adjusted it accordingly. Once the freeze-frame had been enhanced to sufficient clarity, Pete diminished the window tint and zoomed in on the wireless e-mail device in Tess's hands. "I captured her forwarding one of Chase's e-mails, then deleting the last sent-mail entry."

"So Chase couldn't tell she'd done it?" Tim asked.

"Not from the BlackBerry at least. But what she probably didn't know is that there'd still be a record of the forwarded e-mail on Chase's primary computer."

"Which would be at Chase's office. So he could've seen it when he went in to work Monday."

"And it probably got flagged when it hit Vector's server. Digital security at an outfit like that-they don't want to wind up like those bozos at Arthur Andersen."

Tim flipped open his notepad, checking the case chronology. The alignment of dates provided a frame for the other loose facts they'd gathered. They were far from the heart of the matter, but it seemed they were finally circling it. "On Tuesday, Tess drops Sam from the trial. Wednesday she calls Melissa Yueh-a reporter-to tell her she had something to show her. She's killed two days later."

"And her hard drive was stolen," Bear added.

"That's a helluva e-mail," Pete said. "I'm thinking we've got a whistle-blower who drank one too many Vioxx-Celebrex milk shakes or nude JPEGs of Chase in a three-way with Bigfoot and Michael Jackson."

Tim said, "Did you make out what address she forwarded the e-mail to?"

Another click set the footage rolling frame by frame as Tess's thumbs worked the mini-keyboard. "Only these forty-seven frames are visible, just a couple seconds plus," Pete said. As Tess continued, her forearm blocked the BlackBerry screen and keypad from view, and then the angle was lost on the unit altogether. "All I could make out was that the address ended with 'azzu-dot-com.'"

"So what do we do with that?" Bear asked.

"You don't do anything with that, for you are a mere bumbling deputy. But I do several things with that. The logical domain name was 'pizzazzu-dot-net,' one of those cheap-ass banner-intensive ISPs. Working off the assumption that she forwarded the e-mail to herself-the obvious bet given how she covered her tracks-I tried the typical screen-name variations. They all bounced back undeliverable. So I sat down on my doughnut break and had another look at Ms. Tess. Well-put-together girl, not a lot of money. You see her jeans label?" He reversed Tess out of the Mercedes. A few clicks brought the brand name in question into view above a hip scarf. "Tarz. It's Turkish for 'style.' Turkish textiles-great quality and cheap as dirt." Pete regarded Bear's rumpled jacket. "You might consider looking into it. Only one company distributes Tarz in the U.S. They're based in Paterson, New Jersey, and they're online only. So I called, told them I was Tess Jameson's personal assistant and I never received an e-mail receipt for my last order, could they double-check the e-mail they had on record."

Bear said, "And?"

"Tuffnuff-at-pizzazzu-dot-net. Cracking her password wasn't hard: Sammy. But here's where I hit a wall. Pizzazzu deactivates an account and clears the mail cache after it's inactive for two months. Hell, she probably set up the account just to receive this e-mail."

"And we're at?"

"Two months and eight days."

"What now?"

Pete shrugged. "I can't recover the e-mail from her computer because the hard drive was-wisely-switched out."

"Maybe she printed the document and it's hidden at her house," Bear offered.

"And the Piper elected to whack her and steal the hard drive but not check under the mattress? If she did have a hard copy, you can bet your ass he didn't leave it behind."

Bear looked at Tim as if to say, A little help here, but Tim was sorting through Bear's last words. He pictured Tess's cluttered workspace in her bedroom-what was missing from it?

"You're right," Tim said slowly to Bear, "she would've wanted a printed copy of whatever she found in the e-mail to bring to her meeting with Yueh."

"But…" Bear circled a pawlike hand, a monkey who'd flipped the script on the organ grinder.

Tim was still putting it together, the thoughts a half step ahead of his words. "She didn't have a fax machine, so she faxed her letter to Vector from work."

"So? What's that give us?"

"No printer either. That's why her letter to Vector was handwritten."

Pete snapped his fingers, coming upright in the backseat. "She would've forwarded the e-mail to her work e-mail address-"

"To print it there," Bear finished triumphantly.

Tim squealed out from the shoulder, throwing Pete back in his seat. "Come with us," Tim said. "You're dressed for it."

A slender woman with clean, pleasing features and maroon-rimmed eyeglasses pushed around some paperwork behind the reception window. On the counter a ceramic tooth held a stack of WESTIN DENTISTRY business cards in caricatured hands.

Tim tapped his knuckles on the glass, and the woman looked up with a smile. A pencil protruded from her dark brown hair above her ear.

"Can we see Dr. Westin, please? We need to ask him a few quick questions."

"That's me." She stood-not far-and offered a hand. "Michelle Westin."

Behind Tim, Bear fake-coughed his amusement.

"My wife would back him on that one," Tim said. "I'm sorry."

"That's okay. I lost my office manager a few months ago, so I'm trying to cover the cracks between temps." Michelle's expression shifted as she took in the Glock at Bear's belt and Pete in his Erik Estrada getup. "What can I help you with?"

She listened intently, troubled, as Tim filled her in. "Follow me back." She let them through, peering up at Bear; she was maybe five-four, and the contrast was humorous. "You are one big guy."

"I'm on the North Beach Diet," Bear said. "Chips and pasta."

Her smile lingered an extra moment, and then they moved down the hall in single file. Flecked tiles, scrubbed clean, squeaked underfoot. The chilled air smelled of latex and the faux-fruit flavorings that enhance fluoride.

The suite accommodated a dentist chair and a desk tucked into the corner.

Michelle regarded the empty chair. "As much as it sounds selfish, I still have a hard time forgiving her."

The injustice again hit Tim-not just that Tess had been dispatched after such deliberate mistreatment but that her place in people's thoughts had been altered as well. From what Tim had learned of her, he knew she'd have been mortified to have the taint of suicide accompany the mention of her name. Not only had she been murdered but her memory doomed to a sort of haunting. She was a specter unavenged, unredeemed, trapped in the rags of false surrender. Alive, she'd seemed vibrant and strong. The face saved from mere prettiness by a thin nose and intelligent eyes. The self-deprecating tone she'd struck in her letter to Walker. The piles of reading she'd accumulated in a quest to save Sam, a son who now knew her as a mother who'd given up on herself, on him, on everything. She'd been reduced by her death in more ways than one.

Michelle slid a rolling chair out from the desk and beckoned for Pete to sit down. "Help yourselves. This was the computer she used."

Pete grimaced at the iMac. "Great. Macintosh."

"What did she do?" Tim asked.

"What didn't Tess do? Insurance, billing, scheduling, the books."

Tim said, "You were close?"

"We got to be. I hired her right out of her associate's program. She told me about Sam in her interview, and I admired how she threw herself into it, going back to school, all that. She worked after hours every chance she got. I was glad to pay it. We have one of the best group insurance plans, and it still sucks. It's like blood from a stone these days, but I'm sure you know that. I helped her navigate the billing at first, but soon enough she outpaced me. She spent hours every day on the phone with our patients' plans, so she learned how to talk to them. The time came when I'd go to her with questions. Same thing with Sammy's condition. I pointed her in a few directions, a month later it was like she was a geneticist." Her voice warbled, and she paused to recompose herself.

Bear pouched his lips, his eyes pulling to meet Tim's. Tess knew the science behind Xedral. Where had that led her?

Pete, no master of tact, paused from banging on the keyboard and said, "Gimme her work e-mail again?"

Glad for the distraction, Michelle dictated it to him. Munching on a sugar-free lollipop he'd requisitioned from a glass jar in the lobby, Pete proceeded.

Bear said, "Sounds like you lost a good friend."

Michelle nodded and patted him affectionately on the arm. Their eyes met and held an extra beat, and for the first time since Tim had known him, Bear colored. He mumbled his condolences, then blushed again and excused himself for the bathroom. Busy at the iMac, Pete snickered into a fist. Bear smacked him on the head as he passed.

With amusement Tim noted Michelle watching Bear's exit.

Pete's hammering rose to a furious pitch-he could work a keyboard so fast Tim sometimes didn't believe he was actually typing. Pete tilted back in the chair with a sigh and spit the hard candy back into its cellophane wrapper. "You deleted the trashed e-mail cache," he said accusatorily.

"What?" Michelle looked surprised by his sharp tone.

"You have an autoerase feature set up that deletes trashed e-mails after-guess what? — two months." Pete looked at Tim, his palms flipped skyward.

"That's because any e-mails of substance get filed," Michelle said. "We keep records connecting to patient complaints, claims, litigation even. Everything of relevance should be saved in her e-mail files."

"Not everything of relevance," Pete said bitterly.

Bear came in, wiping his hands on his pants. "What?"

"Tess Jameson's old e-mails. They're not on here. I shouldn't be surprised-she probably deleted it herself anyways." Pete rocked forward in the chair and unplugged the computer. "I'm gonna have to take this with me and restore the data."

"Do you mind?" Bear asked.

Michelle shook her head. "Not if it'll help Tess's case. But can you do that? Find data that's been erased?"

"Nothing ever actually gets deleted except the pointers to find the data." Pete stood, tucking the iMac under his arm and rapping its side with his knuckles. "That e-mail's in here. Somewhere. It's just a matter of teasing it out."