Promise Not To Tell(38)
“Technically speaking, I believe tomatoes are considered a fruit.”
“We needed comfort food. It’s been a hard day.”
“This is true.” She closed the cupboard door and looked at him. “What happens now?”
“We need to talk to some of the people at Night Watch.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the company’s HR department has warned the staff not to talk to anyone except the police.”
“Yeah, like that’ll keep people quiet. Odds are ninety-nine percent of the Night Watch employees have probably blabbed everything they know on social media. I’ll see what I can find online.”
“I’ll do what I can to help you, but we are dealing with people who work for a high-tech start-up. They’re bound to be way ahead of me when it comes to navigating the online world.”
“They’ll be light-years ahead of me, too.” Cabot sat down at the kitchen table and opened his computer. “But that may turn out to be their Achilles’ heel.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I’m not going to try to play their games online. I’m going to track them down and talk to them face-to-face. Don’t be fooled by all those TV shows featuring criminals caught by fancy forensics and exotic profiling techniques. The truth is, most investigation work gets done using old-school methods.”
She smiled. “Because people are people, regardless of how much technology they use, is that it?”
“That’s it.” Cabot started clicking keys. “But the great thing about technology is that people who rely on it often believe they are anonymous. That, in turn, makes them careless.”
“Okay, I get that.”
“Which is not to say that the firm of Cutler, Sutter and Salinas couldn’t use someone who has some really sharp computer skills,” Cabot added. “Anson, Max and I are pretty good when it comes to finding people online, running background checks and searching the standard databases. But that’s not the same thing as being able to track the bad guys who hack into a company’s encrypted database. That’s why we don’t take cybersecurity cases.”
“From what I’ve read, catching the online bad guys is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. So much of that kind of thing is done by pirates operating from other countries. Even if you find them, it’s impossible to shut them down.”
“That’s why we leave that kind of work to the big companies. But there will always be low-level scam artists, fraudsters, cons, extortionists and bookkeepers who finance their retirement by embezzling their employers’ profits.”
Virginia froze. “Like my mother?”
Cabot looked up, his eyes very intent. “If your mother did manage to rip off Quinton Zane, then all I’ve got to say is good job. It may have been the only justice the rest of us will ever see.”
She turned around and braced herself against the edge of the counter. “Do you think it’s possible that it was Zane who shot at you today?”
Cabot shook his head. “My gut feeling is that it wasn’t him.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Zane would have come up with a better plan – one that wouldn’t have involved leaving a body with several bullets in it near a house that he used to own.”
Virginia nodded. “As well as a witness who would have done her best to encourage the police to reopen the file on Quinton Zane.”
“What happened today was sloppy. If Zane is still alive, he has managed to stay hidden all these years. Whatever else he is, we know he isn’t sloppy.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring, but I see what you mean.”
CHAPTER 24
She awoke with the sense that something had shifted in the atmosphere. Not an anxiety attack, she concluded. Just a feeling that things had changed somewhere in her condo.
Intruder? The thought iced her nerves. Then she remembered that Cabot was in the guest bedroom. No one would get past him. She was not alone tonight.
She pushed aside the covers, got to her feet and reached for her glasses. True, Cabot was nearby, but for her own peace of mind she needed to check the lock on the front door and make sure the balcony slider was secure.
She pulled on her robe and picked up the heavy-duty flashlight she kept beside the bed.
Barefoot, she opened the door and padded out into the hall. She didn’t keep the flashlight close at hand because she was afraid of the dark. It was all about one of the basic principles of her personal self-defense program: Anything can be used as a weapon. The flashlight doubled as a very solid club. It had an additional advantage: the average intruder would not automatically view it as a threat. Flashlights looked so normal.
At the end of the short hall, the glow of a computer screen bathed the living room in an eerie light. She relaxed immediately. Cabot was awake and working. That explained the shift in the atmosphere.
She stopped worrying about the locks and continued down the hall. Cabot, dressed in his trousers and a gray T-shirt, was sitting at the dining counter. He looked up, his expression concerned but not alarmed.
“Anxiety attack?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“Nope. Oddly enough.” She smiled. “I take it you got your one thirty a.m. wake-up call?”
“Yeah, sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. I was just rummaging around in some of the old files, killing time until I was ready to go back to sleep.”