An ambush of widows, p.19
An Ambush of Widows, page 19
“Well, can I have this palatial room then? I haven’t booked a place to stay.”
“Yeah. I have it reserved for two more nights.”
He gestured at the wall. “You can leave up all your notes. I know that matters to you.”
“I’ll take them with me.”
“Won’t Flora object to being analyzed in her own penthouse?”
“We’ll see. Maybe she can add context.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“That home address in Lakehaven that the navigation tracker said Henry drove to.”
“Yeah. On Summerhill Trail.”
She opened her laptop, found the Travis County tax assessor rolls, did a search when Zach gave her the house number.
“Oh,” she said.
“What?”
“The property is owned by Drew and Jill Grimes. I don’t recognize their names.” It was a high-dollar address, appraised at several million.
She found them quickly on social media. She was a partner at a major law firm in Austin; he was CEO of a large regional bank. “I don’t see a connection to us.”
“The map data just tells you where he parked,” Zach said. “Try the other house addresses.”
She typed in a variety of addresses and then she said. “Shawn and Taylor Townsend’s house is three lots down from that address.”
They stared at each other. “Maybe it wasn’t Adam that hired him. Maybe it was Shawn.”
“I’ve met his wife. She’s, like, you know, suburban-nice.” She almost called her a trophy wife but then thought that was unfair. “She’s setting up the penthouse so I’ll be comfortable there.”
“Have you met Shawn Townsend?”
“I haven’t. Taylor said he hadn’t heard of Henry. Melinda said there was no contact trace for Henry in their network, but maybe Shawn erased it all. I need to see this Shawn guy.”
“You’re not going over to their house,” he said, “at least not alone.”
Of course I am, she thought. “I need to get my things moved over to Flora’s penthouse.”
“I don’t much like that idea either.”
“I didn’t ask,” Kirsten said. “Either support me or go home.”
“I’m going to get my stuff from the car.”
“Okay.” She started pulling the taped pieces of paper off the wall as Zach left the room. She quickly gathered all the information—printed articles, pictures, sticky notes—and stuck them into a folder.
There was a lot going on at Zhang Townsend—failed investments, sexual indiscretions—and she’d thought only of Adam’s potentially bad behavior and not of his partner’s. She had to think how to play this. If it was Shawn who was responsible, then she had her chance because it felt like the news and the theorizing were swinging toward Flora or Melinda. No one was looking hard at Shawn and how he might gain from shedding himself of Adam as a business partner.
She stuck the folder of papers into her carry-on bag and zipped it up.
Zach came back with a surprisingly large suitcase. Men, she thought, they never can pack. He also had a pizza and bottled water from a restaurant down the street.
They ate like people who didn’t have time to enjoy their food, just needing fuel.
“Thanks for this. And everything,” she said. “If you’re going to stay here, I thought you should know I thought maybe someone had been in the room today.”
He lowered the slice of pepperoni pizza he’d been about to bite into. “You mean other than the housekeeper.”
“Yeah. A jacket I left was on the floor; I had hung it on the chair.”
“I was in the room. I made some calls from here.” He shrugged. “I probably knocked it over.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. “But right now I want to go to Henry’s hotel room.”
“If it’s under his name, the police will know about it.”
“But his laptop might be there. If they don’t…”
“How exactly are we supposed to get into a room if we don’t know what name it’s under?”
She looked for the hotel name on her phone’s browser with the address Zach supplied. Hotel Byte. Odd name. She dialed the hotel and asked to be connected to Henry North’s room. The clerk said there was no guest there by that name.
And then hung up on her.
“That’s odd.”
“Hotel Byte,” Zach said. “I’ve heard of that. There’s one in New Orleans.”
“Well, do you want to go with me to check it out?”
He nodded.
35
Hotel Byte sat off South Congress, a small old-fashioned building that sported a lit No Vacancy sign. The parking lot was mostly empty. The place itself looked deserted.
The front door wasn’t glass, like you’d expect, but steel. Zach tried it and it was locked. A sign announced “Members Only.” It didn’t give hours that the lobby (presumably on the other side of the door) was open.
“What kind of hotel is this?” Kirsten asked. She pressed the intercom button.
A tinny voice on the other side said, “Reservation code?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Then password, please.”
“I don’t know your password.”
“Sorry, members only.” The voice was male, youngish, a bit hoarse.
“We have reason to believe that my husband stayed here. Henry North. Can you at least tell me if there’s a room here in his name?”
“I cannot and you are trespassing.”
“Henry North was murdered and the police are investigating. We can go and get the police and bring them back here.”
No answer. After a minute, she walked away from the lobby door and toward the other doors along the courtside of the building, which had a 1950s roadside motel architecture to it. All the doors were steel. They had no numbers. The windows were reflective—she couldn’t even see if there were curtains on the other side. She returned to the lobby door.
“What is this place?” she said to Zach, who had walked down the other side of the hotel and returned.
He shrugged and took out his phone instead of answering and stepped away from her, talking softly.
She got annoyed and pressed the intercom button again.
“I really cannot help you,” the young man said again. “Please leave.”
“I get the feeling this place doesn’t want a parking lot full of TV news crews and police cars,” Kirsten said.
“Who are you?”
“Kirsten North. Henry’s wife. Henry’s widow. We know his car was here. We’ve tracked it.” She watched Zach end his call, punch another number into his phone, and begin talking again.
“This is a private establishment,” the voice said. She saw Zach walk up to her and put the phone close to the intercom. And then she heard a voice come out of the phone.
“This is Paul Fortunato. Account 230, password tko93bv. Admit my guests, please.”
Silence, and then they heard the sharp click of the lobby door unlocking. They entered into a small fifties-style motel lobby, with at least one notable exception: a wide-screen monitor that sat behind the check-in desk and displayed financial futures and cryptocurrency prices.
No one was in the lobby; the door was electronically controlled.
“I’m officially weirded out,” Kirsten whispered.
“We just fell down a rabbit hole,” Zach whispered. “It’s a hotel for hackers.”
“A what?” she said, but then a back door opened and a young man came out, dressed in a Pokémon T-shirt and jeans. Glaring at them.
Zach whispered, “The Fortunatos have an account at the one in New Orleans.”
“This is really truly not permitted,” he said. He wore a name tag that said Xeno.
“I don’t care,” Kirsten said. “I need to know if Henry stayed here and if his room is still available.”
“Our guests aren’t registered by their names. So I don’t know a Henry.”
She pulled up a photo of him on her phone. “Do you recognize him?”
She could tell from the man’s reaction the answer was yes. “So, he did stay here,” she said.
“He still has two days on his room reservation.”
“Can you let us in his room?”
“This is most unusual. I need to check with Central on this.…”
Kirsten thought. A hotel that didn’t use names, tracked cryptocurrency in the lobby, and was for members only. For hackers. So it was a very niche audience, and one that put a lot of trust in their anonymity. That trust could be quickly eliminated.
“I know a journalist who’s writing about the murder case and would love this mysterious, edgy angle,” she said. “And if you don’t…”
Zach touched her arm gently. And then she saw the gun at the concierge’s side. Holstered, but there.
“We don’t want to threaten anyone. But you’d rather deal with us than the police asking more about what goes on here,” Zach said. “I mean, my boss is a member and he’d agree with me. If you ask higher-ups, it escalates. We look, we leave, you don’t get any unwanted attention. Maybe the police never need to come here.”
Xeno considered. He said, “Follow me.”
“I’d prefer that you show us to his room unarmed,” Zach said.
The hacker concierge stared at Zach. “Who do you work for again?”
“The Fortunatos of New Orleans.”
Count of three, then Xeno removed his weapon and secured it in a small safe under the counter. “All right. I haven’t given this much special treatment in a long time.” He sounded peevish.
They followed him, not back outside, but down a hallway that also featured steel doors. Kirsten realized that the original motor court layout of the building had been modified—there was a privacy hallway to access the rooms that ran parallel to the parking lot. It wasn’t large, and they had to walk in single file, but it meant a room could be entered without being visible from the street.
Xeno held the door for them.
“Can we have some privacy?” Zach asked.
“No,” the concierge said. “You may not. I’ll wait right here.”
Kirsten walked to the closet. Henry’s clothes, hanging up. Underwear, folded and stacked on the shelf. She leaned into his shirt before she thought and she could smell him, the scent of his soap. And for one moment tears threatened to overwhelm her.
She felt Zach’s hand on her shoulder. She stepped away from the shirt. The bed was messily unmade.
“I assume there’s not traditional daily housekeeping,” she said. “Given the obsession with privacy.”
Xeno said, “I handle that. We don’t have a housekeeping staff. It has to be requested. He has made no requests.” So—Henry didn’t make the bed.
Henry had made their bed every day of their marriage.
She looked on the desk. No computer, but a charger sat there, waiting to be used.
“His laptop is gone,” she said.
“He must have taken it with him,” Zach said.
To the warehouse.
“Do you have a record of his browsing history here?” she asked Xeno.
“No, obviously not,” Xeno said, managing to sound horrified. “That would be considered a grave security risk. Our internet servers do not record history or activity. We guarantee anonymity.”
Henry stayed here because he needed to be invisible.
Because he had work to do.
That could not be discovered.
And something he found while he was here led him to the warehouse. And Adam Zhang.
She and Zach searched. No sign of a handy, convenient second flash drive. Surely he backed up whatever work he did here. But there was nothing.
“This isn’t like him,” she told Zach.
“Then he made a different choice for a reason,” Zach said.
Xeno looked bored. “Are you done yet?”
Zach took a step toward the concierge and Kirsten stopped him.
She packed Henry’s clothes, carefully, trying not to cry in front of this jerk concierge. Henry had packed himself for this trip. He had come here and checked into the most secure hotel in the city. He had done something, apparently, for a millionaire. He had driven to a warehouse. He had died. None of it made sense to her.
“You have to have some digital record of his activity,” Kirsten said to Xeno.
“Ma’am, not having any digital record is the entire point. This is an invisible zone.” He crossed his arms. “I’m really sorry for what happened to him, but I can’t show you a blank slate and expect to be helpful to you.”
“Has this ever happened before? A guest killed?” Kirsten asked.
“Not while I’ve been here. We’re not criminals. We’re digital explorers.”
“Kirsten,” Zach said. She turned toward him. He was kneeling by the bed, on the opposite side from where she and Xeno stood. He held a thick sheaf of papers that he had pulled from under the mattress. “They were pushed under here.”
“Well, that’s retro security,” Xeno said. “Did he hide money under the mattress too?”
Zach looked at the pages and she saw his mouth tremble before he handed them to her. He walked over to the concierge and shoved him out and slammed the door. “Just give us a damn minute,” he yelled through the steel. “I’ll punch your face in if you open that door. It’s private. She’s his widow. She’s in mourning.”
Kirsten’s gaze went down the first page as she sat on the edge of the bed.
The cover page indicated it was a report compiled by North Star Consulting, Henry’s company name. She noticed the pages were numbered and stapled together.
She read on the inside of the report:
Mr. Zhang:
Per our discussion, I accessed your wife’s computer through your home network. I also accessed her work computer at her workplace. Here are my preliminary findings for your review. The most concerning section is at the end.
Kirsten scanned the first pages. The next pages detailed Flora Zhang’s finances—her bank balances, her credit card payments.
“Why hire Henry for this? He’s not a private detective! Adam already had her followed.”
“So you said,” Zach said. “And when he didn’t get any satisfaction, he decided to look at her digital life.”
The next page was an analysis of her home email patterns. Nothing interesting.
“If he got hired, is this the whole work product? He was only here a day, so maybe he was working on it before he got here. And then…he got…” She could not finish.
Zach’s voice was gentle. “We know Henry was short on money. Maybe he took on this kind of work.”
“Unlicensed?”
Zach shrugged.
She got to the final pages. She read. She sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed.
Searching through the folder structure on your wife’s personal laptop I found an encrypted folder marked as “system_software_7B,” a meaningless term that does not apply to your wife’s operating system. I performed a password hack against the folder and gained entry. There I discovered a large cache of PDF files, all articles and news accounts on women who had been caught, tried, and sentenced after murdering their husbands. There were fourteen articles in all, including six that referenced women who hired killers to eliminate their husbands. There were an additional eight files on cases involving women suspected of murdering their husbands but who had successfully avoided prosecution. The files are attached for your reference.
She went through the cases. They had an unsettling pattern. The husband was often rich, often abusive, and the wife had reached a point of no return. She had either enlisted a boyfriend, a former boyfriend, a man who wanted to be her boyfriend, or a paid killer. Several of the articles described how the wife had solicited the services of a hit man. Friend of a friend. Anonymous ad on the internet. Asking a criminal acquaintance for a reference. It was a sad litany of suffering and murder.
She handed the sheaf of papers to Zach.
He read through them. “I told you. Cui bono? She has the most to gain.”
“Does she strike you as the type?”
“She would hire it out if she was going to do it.”
“And who benefits if Flora’s blamed for this?” Kirsten asked.
Zach frowned. “What, you don’t believe Henry found this?”
“I don’t believe Henry would get involved in this.”
“God only knows what Zhang offered him.”
“I could take this to the police. Say I found it on his computer backup, printed it out.”
“You could. That sounds like an excellent idea.”
Kirsten paced the floor. “And then they’ll arrest her, maybe, and she’ll hire a bunch of fat-cat lawyers and she’ll walk. Some of these women walked. Adam was an asshole.”
“But Henry wasn’t.”
“Bard said something. That Adam was killed with two shots to the head. Like it was precise. But Henry was shot four times. In the chest.” Kirsten stopped pacing and looked at him. “Why would a hired killer do that?”
“Why do you want to believe this woman is innocent?”
“I want to be sure. I want to know it. She’s letting me stay at her place. I can get the truth out of her.”
Zach shook his head. “If you kill her, you’ll be the prime suspect.”
“Will I?”
“Likely.”
Kirsten narrowed her gaze. “Can you find out if a hit man’s been hired?”
“How…”
“Your boss. He knows people.”
“It’s not casually discussed. No. Not without a name, a face.”
“If she hired him, she has a way to contact him. I want them both. It’s no good if I just catch her.”
“The best ones don’t interact with their clients. They have handlers. Go-betweens.”
“Do you know who the go-between might be? Would the Fortunatos know?”
“Kirsten. Let me take you home.” An ache in Zach’s voice, one she’d never heard before, nearly made her want to cry. “There is nothing for you here but misery and regret.”
“There’s nothing for me at home. I can’t imagine going back to that house knowing he’s never coming home. I can’t…”
