Clear Skies Page 5

  “So she could have died at midnight last night, which you estimated in the first place at the crime scene,” Slade said, frustrated by the time Abe was taking to confirm his initial prediction.

  Abe held up a hand before Slade could say more.

  “More likely between ten and eleven,” he said. “Midnight was merely a guess on-site. This estimate is closer to a certainty.”

  Putting Isa further out of the crime’s time frame.

  Slade left the morgue to deliver Palmer’s laptop to fingerprint analysis for dusting and waited for the result.

  The news was not good. The computer hardware had been wiped clean of fingerprints, and the few found on the leather sofa, coffee table, and other objects in the vicinity of the body belonged to the victim. The weapon was still missing, and Slade believed it would stay that way. Even if they found it, he knew it too would be clean.

  The technicians had lifted prints from several people off the glasses, plates, and cutlery in the dishwasher. None turned up in the national fingerprint database available to the law enforcement agencies. The predominance of whorl patterns suggested that half the guests who’d dined with Palmer before the murder were Asian, most likely Japanese. This finding agreed with Isa’s understanding and was hardly a surprise given their geographic location. But there were no clues to their identities.

  Next, he handed the laptop to Alex Roche at computer forensics on the same floor and made his way downstairs to ballistics. At three-thirty in the afternoon, the section was deserted as usual.

  When he’d joined the CIB, Slade had been staggered to learn that gun-related crimes are uncommon in Japan, with just two or three minor incidents a week and significantly fewer than ten shooting homicides a year in a nation of one hundred and twenty million people. The CIB’s ballistic experts spent most of their time teaching the technical aspects of firearms use to recruits at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Academy and lecturing university students enrolled in criminal investigation courses.

  When Slade turned to leave, the lab chief, Koji Hashimoto, strode through the doorway.

  “Hi, Dan. I hoped you’d call in.”

  His diminutive stature contrasted with his booming voice when he spoke in English with an exaggerated American accent. Hashimoto had completed post-graduate criminology studies at a university in the US and often sought out Slade to converse in English.

  “The assailant shot your victim in the head at close range, using a .38 special revolver with extreme precision, incurring virtually no apparent blood loss. I’m sure ME Abe told you this meant death was immediate. The close similarity of the wounds and bullets reconstructed from the fragments extracted from the victim and the shoulder of the uniformed officer proves they were shot with the same weapon.”

  Hashimoto’s eyes searched Slade’s face for a reaction. Slade thought he was much older than first impressions suggested. Up close, Slade noticed a failed attempt to cover his white hair with a comb-in black dye. Hashimoto’s entire head of hair displayed a bizarre ombre pattern from white at the roots to various shades of brown through to black at the tips, a not uncommon sight among middle-agers in Japan. Slade wondered if Hashimoto knew the overall result was a dead giveaway of his age.

  “Is that it?” Slade asked.

  “You can see the entry wound here,” Hashimoto pointed to the head trauma in a graphic photograph of the victim and paused for Slade to examine the image.

  “I’d say the perpetrator held the gun to Palmer’s head from no more than two feet away, because there was little sooting. He or she used a modified hollow-point expanding bullet to cause maximum internal damage without the bullet exiting the skull. From the angle of bullet entry and the direction of its track, I’m tempted to say the killer used his left hand to fire the weapon. I think you should look for a left-handed Japanese professional killer, who works locally.”

  “Why Japanese and why local?”

  “Because the .38 special revolver is the most commonly used firearm in Japan. They’re relatively easy for criminals to get hold of here, and they’re lighter and simpler to control than the 9-mm handguns popular with criminals overseas. They’re easier to conceal, too. A foreign assassin would use a more sophisticated weapon.”

  Slade left Hashimoto and was en route to his desk to deal with the paperwork when Alex Roche caught him on the stairs.

  At thirty and five foot eleven, Roche was similar in age and build to the young IT forensics staff in his department, but unlike them, his face was set off by light brown, curly hair and permanently sported a groomed, two-day growth of beard.

  Slade was just a few years older than Roche, but he felt they were a generation apart. A man who’d always raise an eyebrow instead of his voice, Roche spent most of his life in cyberspace viewing the world from inside computers and the websites of others. He worked, in essence, as a sanctioned hacker paid by the French authorities to carry out research for “strategic counterintelligence” and was partway through a year in Japan to share his skills with the CIB’s IT staff.

  “Dan, I think we might have a positive outcome from a bit of luck and a lot of technology,” he said, his voice melodic from a thick French accent.

  “That was fast. What have you got?”

  “Nothing definite yet, but I’m in the process of retrieving data. I’ll have to analyze it and follow the links, but I should have more substantial information for you tomorrow. Good progress, n’est-ce pas?”

  Slade was relieved. “It looked to me like all the files were deleted and the operating system destroyed.”

  “There’s only one effective way to eliminate data, and that’s to smash your computer and other devices with a sledgehammer. And even then, we can extract data from fragments of hardware. I’ve retrieved data from a laptop that somebody shot with a rifle and dropped in a swimming pool.”

  “I thought if the computer booted up to a blue screen, even experts like you had trouble accessing the files,” Slade said.

  “Au contraire. More than likely, the information is still in the system, sitting in the same place it was before the incident that caused the computer to fail. Computers don’t erase data until the user overwrites it with other data.”

  “So you can extract whatever’s in Palmer’s computer?”

  “I’ll remove the hard drive, search for data fragments with our scanning tools, and try to make sense of what turns up,” Roche said. “After that, I’ll create a timeline of activity from timestamps associated with the files and file fragments. When I export a copy of every string of characters detected on the hard drive, voilà, I will be able to work out passwords of compressed files. The cyber-tools to do this exist. You just have to know how to use them.”

  “What about emails?”

  “People are more open in electronic communication than in documents, so retrieving emails is my top priority in a digital forensic investigation. Deleted emails are often an easy catch. The blue screen of death can be an easy fix too if you use the right tools.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.” Slade turned and walked down the stairs. The prospect of extracting clues from Roche’s forensic work put a bounce in his steps.

  CHAPTER 9

  (Thursday Evening—Tokyo)

  Two and a half hours later, Slade walked past chaos on his dining table, stepped over a pile of fashion designs, and sent another cascading to the floor. He’d pegged Isa as methodical when he watched her in Palmer’s kitchen, but the state of his living room jarred that image. He poured himself an espresso from his coffeemaker on the kitchen benchtop and shot an inquiring glance at Isa.

  “Yes, please. I’d love another cup.”

  Slade glanced at a pile of cups with coffee residue in the sink.

  “It looks like it’s been a long afternoon.”

  The aroma of his favorite mocha blend stimulated his sleep-deprived senses when he poured their drinks. He glanced at the papers scattered on the table, and though he knew little about fashion, he visualized
her designs on the catwalk.

  “These are good.”

  “Thank you. Sorry for spreading out like this, but it’s how I work. I’ll clear the mess away soon.”

  “So you’ll meet your deadline despite what you’ve been through today?”

  “Yes. Focusing on a task like this helps me deal with stress. And coffee helps too,” she said, inclining her head toward the kitchen sink. “Until you came in this evening, I’d almost forgotten Chloe’s death and the danger you think I’m facing.”

  “The danger you are facing. The attacker meant to kill you today.”

  Isa shook her head. “I don’t know anything. You’re overstating the threat.”

  “Well, there is a threat, and I’ve got to keep you safe until we uncover what’s at the root of it and deal with the situation. I need you to cooperate and stay here until I’m confident the risk has passed.”

  Isa frowned. “I’ve done more than enough designs to keep Ono happy. I delivered one batch to her a month ago. When I take these additional sketches to her, she’ll select what she wants, and ask me to do some fine tuning. So there’s not a lot more I can work on while I’m here.”

  “You can help me. You’ll be astonished by how much information lurks in subconscious memory. We have to find the trigger to get it out.” Slade pulled out his cell phone. “In the meantime, it’s late, I’m hungry, and I’m sure you are too. I’ll order pizzas. Keep working until they arrive, and we’ll eat over at the coffee table. After that, I’ll ask you more questions, and we’ll see what you can remember.”

  Slade’s doorbell rang. He felt a surge of anticipation when he saw Roche holding a bunch of notes. He led him to the bedroom and closed the door.

  “What have you got, Alex?”

  “Someone regularly accessed Palmer’s computer using a Trojan horse,” Roche said.

  “What the hell is a Trojan horse in cyberland?”

  “It’s a tool that lets hackers secretly access another person’s computer remotely and track the victim’s actions,” Roche said. “Hackers send an innocent message carrying the Trojan, which gets into the computer when the user opens the message. Or, to be certain of success, they can insert it directly into the computer if they have a chance to access it physically, which might be the more likely scenario in this case.”

  Roche handed Slade his notes.

  “This looks like gibberish to me,” Slade said.

  “Trojans are sinister programs. Once hackers get access to someone’s computer, they can do anything with it the user can do. The usual objective is browsing the hard drive to see if the user has stored any valuable information, like confidential documents, credit card details, passwords, and email communications between the user and third parties. If hackers find anything of value, they copy the data to their hard drive.”

  “So you’re saying the hacker could read Palmer’s incoming and outgoing emails and documents, even if they were password-protected,” Slade said.

  “Oui. The worst thing is that all these processes were hidden from her and going on while she sat in front of her computer. Trojans also record the user’s keystrokes and transmit the information back to the hacker. This hacker designed the remote-access Trojan installed on Palmer’s computer to gain complete control of her system and monitor her schedule, travel plans, messages, and so on.”

  Slade sat back on the sofa and remained silent while he digested the information.

  “Have you got anything more specific than this?” he asked.

  “I’ve traced data flow to and from Palmer’s computer to IP addresses in the US and the UK and recovered some encrypted documents. If you give me time, I can break the code and decrypt the text. I’ll get on it again first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Slade stood up and walked with Roche to the door. “Let’s hope the content of the secret transmission will point us in the perp’s direction.”

  # # #

  After two Margherita pizzas and a bottle of decent 2009 red Chianti from Tuscany, Slade still had no leads.

  He learned that Isa’s mother had succumbed to cancer two years previously, and her father to a heart attack a year after that. The losses had convinced her to pursue a lifelong dream of establishing her own fashion house, but without investors, she had to do it the hard way. That meant designing freelance for other fashion houses while picking up odd jobs to pay the rent between assignments.

  In theory, this experience should land her a position as a full-time designer for a high-end couturier, and then, with enough savings, she’d start her own Isa brand.

  In practice, it was taking longer than planned, and she now hoped for a kickstart in the Japanese market, where urban fashion was vibrant, demand enormous, and fashion houses eager for foreign ideas. Fashion trends spread at lightning speed throughout Japan, where the entire population behaved as one—if she could build a critical mass of fans, soon nearly everyone would be wearing her designs.

  “Fifteen to twenty years ago, a few Japanese trendsetters decided to go blonde,” Isa said. “Within weeks, ninety percent of the population had blonde or light brown hair. Remember the chapatsu or tea-hair craze? I’m hoping to benefit from the same phenomenon.”

  “How could I forget? Foreigners were almost invisible on the streets among the fair-haired Japanese.”

  Listening to Isa, Slade thought she came across as totally self-assured, with an inner resolve. He’d not seen her fidget. But her usual self-control relaxed considerably when the topic of conversation turned to fashion design.

  Isa stashed her work, and Slade cleared away the remains of their meal. He thought she’d landed herself in a hornet’s nest and was unaware of vital information buried deep in latent memory. A faint doubt in the recesses of his mind also said she might be a devious quantity.

  Advice from an instructor during FBI training in criminal investigation echoed inside his head—when a woman is devious, she can outwit a man with minimum effort. It was all about getting his hormones in motion. And while Slade knew he’d have to watch his hormones around Isa, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to control their effects.

  # # #

  He lay in the makeshift Japanese futon bedding on the floor of his living room, deep in thought, when he heard a soft knock from the other side of the bedroom door.

  “Yes?”

  “Dan, can I go through to the bathroom?” Isa asked.

  “No problem. Come on through.” He propped himself up on his elbows and pulled the covers to his waist. Isa opened the door and noticed his bare chest.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, trying not to laugh. “I won’t get out of bed.”

  Isa drifted past the end of his futon bed to the bathroom. She wore an oversized T-shirt and apparently little else. From where he lay on the floor, the view aroused him. When she came out of the bathroom, backlight bounced off her shiny black hair like a halo and threw her long slender legs into relief. His senses took off in a vertigo dive.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She ran her hands through her hair. “How’s your bed?”

  “It’s fine. I like sleeping on a futon now and then.” He looked at her T-shirt, his smile crinkling the fine lines around his eyes. “I should have lent you pajamas. I didn’t realize you needed them.”

  “I don’t sleep in pajamas.” She walked toward him and glanced at his chest for an instant. “And it looks like you don’t either.”

  She laughed, and the room lit up. Devious or not, no woman he’d ever been with before looked this good. Their gazes met, and his common sense drowned in a wave of desire. Slade had met her that morning for the first time at a crime scene, but it felt like they were close friends about to become lovers. His spine tingled with the intense frisson of excitement that comes at the start of a relationship.

  “Come and sit down.” Slade took hold of her wrist and pulled her down beside him.

  “I should go to bed,” she whispered and moved to get up.

>   “Yes, you should.” Slade pulled her back and caressed her lips with his fingertips at first. She did not pull away, and he kissed her. He let objective discretion give way to the moment, and his kiss grew intense. He held the nape of her neck in his hand and with his other hand on her back, eased her into the futon beside him. Soon she lay in his arms.

  When he came up for air between kisses and smiled at her, she said, “I’m surprising myself. I thought I had better control. And I assumed you did, for sure.”

  “You’ve had me since you answered my first question this morning. I’ve wanted you ever since. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s pure chemistry. Maybe we’re perfect for each other and fate brought us together.” Slade laughed, feeling no self-recrimination for his standard lovemaking preamble.

  “I know this is a stereotypical comment, but I don’t usually jump into bed with a man I hardly know.”

  “Well,” he whispered, “We’d better make the most of this rare opportunity.”

  # # #

  Morning sunlight reflected by a wall mirror aroused Slade from his passion-induced slumber. He reached out to Isa, but the futon beside him was empty, the sheets still steeped in the memory of the night before.

  Recollection of her uninhibited lovemaking and the lingering scent of her perfume distracted him from the insistent ringing of his cell phone. Whoever called rang off and the number did not display. He glanced at his watch. He’d overslept. It was nine o’clock, and he should have been up and working on the case over two hours ago.

  He knocked and opened the bedroom door, but neither Isa nor her oversized folio bag filled with designs was there. She’d made up the bed, but her makeup lined up on the dresser meant she planned to return. He shouted her name outside the bathroom, and the silence in response was deafening in his rising state of panic. She’d gone. She must have left of her own free will, or he’d have heard a struggle.

  Slade opened the front door and asked the officer stationed outside if he’d seen her leave.

  “No one’s entered or left in the time I’ve been here, but she could have gone before eight-thirty. We’ve been instructed to cover your apartment from eight-thirty in the morning to six-thirty at night.”