Scattered Graves, page 33
part #6 of Diane Fallon Forensic Investigation Series
Caleb grinned for the first time. ‘‘Did it recognize that? Did it say something?’’
‘‘Yes,’’ said Frank. ‘‘It said it was funny and asked us if we knew why it was funny.’’
Caleb laughed and slapped his thighs. Diane could hear the joy in his voice—like a parent enjoying what his child had learned to do.
If the sheriff or the Wilsons were getting impatient, they didn’t show it. The sheriff appeared to be content to let Caleb’s story unfold the way he wanted it to. Diane felt that it was important to understand his programming abilities, for that seemed to be the basis for the crimes.
Caleb hesitated a moment, as if he knew he needed to get to the topic at hand. His face grew solemn and he looked as if he was about to tear up.
‘‘Malcolm Chen, as I said, was a friend,’’ he said, ‘‘and I killed him.’’
52
Arlen and Mary Wilson sat up straight. She put a hand
over her mouth.
‘‘No,’’ she whispered.
‘‘You are entitled to have a lawyer,’’ Diane repeated.
‘‘You need to do that, son,’’ said the sheriff.
‘‘Listen to them,’’ said Arlen. He started to rise from his chair.
Caleb shook his head violently.
‘‘Look … Let’s just say that everything I say is hypothetical and leave it at that. Will that be all right? Everything I’m going to tell you is hypothetical. But I need to tell you.’’
‘‘Okay, son,’’ said the sheriff. ‘‘Tell us your hypothetical story.’’
Arlen sat back down.
‘‘You asked me if Spence Jefferies recruited me. He recruited Mal—Malcolm—to work as a hacker. Mal was so easily impressed and thought he was on the inside. But Jefferies didn’t just want hackers, he wanted programmers. Mal was a good hacker, but he couldn’t see the ones and zeros, I mean really see them,’’ he said, looking at each of them.
‘‘I know what you mean,’’ said Frank.
‘‘Were you the one who hacked Jefferies’ computer?’’ Caleb asked.
Frank shook his head. ‘‘It was another guy. I just offered suggestions.’’
‘‘But you understand about seeing the math?’’ he said.
‘‘Yes,’’ said Frank.
‘‘Mal told Jefferies about me. I wasn’t interested in the job fairs, or even getting that kind of job. I was interested in working with AI. I was still in school and wanted to go to graduate school. But Mal told him about me and told him I was the best.’’
Caleb frowned, looking angry.
‘‘Jefferies came after me. He tried to bribe me. First with watches. What the hell kind of bribe is that? I don’t need a watch that costs ten thousand dollars. Who does? Then he offered me money. A lot of it. I didn’t like what they were doing. I knew it was a cybergang. I told Mal it wasn’t a game. It was serious business, and these guys were criminals. He just laughed.’’
‘‘He couldn’t bribe you?’’ prompted Frank.
Caleb shook his head.
‘‘Then he started threatening my family. The farm. He was rich and he said he could take Grampa’s farm away from him. He owed a lot of money and Jefferies said he would buy out his mortgage like they were doing to other people. So I gave in. I told him I would write his programs. What he wanted was trojans carrying viruses to gather information. Do you know about that?’’ he asked.
‘‘I’m a detective in the Metro-Atlanta Fraud and Computer Forensics Unit,’’ said Frank. ‘‘I’ve been working on the rise in identity thefts caused by Jefferies’ cybergang.’’
Caleb nodded. ‘‘So you know the damage those viruses can do. Jefferies wanted me to write one that was harder to detect. One that didn’t hog the CPU use, so it would be harder to discover. He also wanted me to work in the Rosewood Bank and install one of my viruses to steal information about the patrons and about other banks in the Federal Reserve System. Jefferies was fascinated with programmers. He thought we were a cross between magicians and pets.’’
‘‘What happened with Malcolm Chen?’’ asked Frank. ‘‘Hypothetically.’’
‘‘Stupid.’’ Caleb shook his head. ‘‘He got stupid. I couldn’t convince him these guys weren’t to be messed with. He bought into their hype that he was some kind of special expert that no one could touch. He figured out how much money Jefferies was raking in and decided to steal some of it. He hacked into Jefferies’ computer and stole some of his offshore account numbers and transferred the money to an account he set up.’’
Caleb shook his head again. ‘‘He didn’t tell me. If he had told me, I could have helped him cover it up. I discovered that Mayor Jefferies’ computer had been hacked when he asked me to work on it. I told Jefferies he had been hacked, and he was furious. I didn’t know it was Mal because Mal hadn’t told me, don’t you see?’’
Caleb stopped for a moment as if to catch his breath. He looked at each of them and his gaze lingered on his grandparents, who smiled at him.
‘‘Jefferies asked me if I knew where there was some land away from everything where he could hide something. He didn’t tell me what. I told him about McCarthy’s land. You know, Grampa, the guy from Detroit who can’t decide what he wants to do with his little piece of property.’’
His grandfather nodded. ‘‘I told them about him,’’ he said.
‘‘Jefferies made me take him out there to show him. Curtis Crabtree and Edgar Peeks were with him. When we got there they opened the trunk of the car, and there was Mal in the trunk, tied up and gagged. They dragged him out and called that other guy, Gage Shipman, on Jefferies’ cell. The phone was on speaker and Shipman described my brother Henry doing his chores. Shipman was here at our farm. Over in the woods. He was right here, watching Henry.’’
Diane had a sick feeling in her stomach. She saw Arlen and his wife reach for each other.
Tears began to flow from Caleb’s eyes, spilling onto his cheeks as he started crying. His eyes grew red and puffy. He got the hiccups, and it was hard for him to catch his breath. Frank handed him a box of Kleenex from an end table and went to the kitchen and brought back a glass of water. Caleb wiped his eyes and blew his nose. He took a long drink, almost to the bottom of the glass.
‘‘Jefferies put a gun in my hand and told me if I didn’t shoot Malcolm, they would tell Gage Shipman to kill my little brother.’’
Caleb stopped and cried again, his shoulders heaving with the flow of tears that dripped onto his hands. His grandmother gasped and held a hand to her mouth. Both she and her husband were tearing up.
‘‘How do you make a decision like that? How do you do that? You’ve seen Henry, how special he is. He’s my brother. How could they ask me to make that kind of decision?’’
He sniffed and blew his nose again.
‘‘Mal begged me. He was crying and begging me not to shoot him. But I did. They called Shipman off and they took the gun from me. Jefferies told me I was a murderer now and that he owned me. He said it wouldn’t be too bad because I would make a lot of money. He took Mal’s watch off him and gave it to me and told me that as long as I did what he wanted, Henry would be safe.’’
‘‘So you killed Jefferies,’’ said Diane.
Caleb was silent for a long while. No one said anything.
‘‘It’s funny,’’ Caleb said. ‘‘I wrote the virus Jefferies wanted, and it never occurred to him that I would put it on his computer.’’ Caleb looked at Diane. ‘‘I owned his network. I knew everything he did, including where he kept all his money, who he had hired, and where they worked. I had their programs. I had everything. I had it all sent to my computer here.’’
Frank raised his eyebrows. Diane could imagine what he was thinking.
He drank the last of his water. He’d stopped crying, and his face was like stone. His eyes were mere slits, and his mouth was set in a grim frown.
‘‘Jefferies so admired Alexander the Great. Well, I knew about Alexander the Great too. And I knew what he would do to defeat an enemy. He’d cut off its head. To kill a snake, you take off the head. In this case it was more like a hydra and two more would grow back. I had to kill the others too. I shot Jefferies. I was going to kill Peeks, but someone beat me to it. I was going to get everyone who wore that stupid pinky ring. It was the only way I could make sure Henry would be safe. After I shot Jefferies, I put Mal’s watch on him. He could have the damn thing back.’’
‘‘Why didn’t you come to us, Caleb?’’ said Arlen. ‘‘We would have helped.’’
Caleb looked at his grandparents. ‘‘You would have done the right thing, and you would have been killed for it. I had no place to go for help.’’
‘‘You should have come straight to me, son,’’ said the sheriff. ‘‘I would have handled it. You didn’t have to kill them.’’
‘‘I couldn’t take the chance with Henry’s life, Sheriff, I’m sorry. You’re a good man, but there’s one of you and a whole gang of them. All of them vicious and cold-blooded. Jefferies was the mayor; Peeks was the chief of police. They’d hired a bunch of their own cops. His friend Bryce controlled the crime lab. Jefferies had a judge killed and was friends with the governor. He bragged that he was going to get someone inside the GBI. Where could I go?
Who was I supposed to go to? Who could I trust? As far as I was concerned, he had broken the social contract.’’
Caleb looked at Diane. ‘‘Are you familiar with John Locke?’’ he asked.
Diane nodded. ‘‘You no longer had to give up your right to aggressively protect yourself and your family, because the government had not fulfilled its part of the bargain. From your point of view, the government could not maintain social order. Does that sum up
your position?’’ said Diane.
Caleb nodded. ‘‘What else could I have done?’’
David was faced with the same dilemma exactly, thought Diane. He dropped out and started his own investigation. He skirted the law a little, but he wouldn’t have killed. But then, David was a lot older than Caleb; he had a world more experience, resources to use, and maturity. It makes a difference. Caleb was essentially a kid. He was a kid for how long—almost twenty years? And a young adult for one.
What would any of us have done if our families had been threatened in that way? What would I have done had I known what Ivan Santos had in mind for Ariel and our friends at the mission? thought Diane . Would I have gone after him?
Epilogue
The aftermath to the whole Jefferies episode was unsettling to everyone in Rosewood. The meth lab explosion the previous year had brought people together. But this series of events and disclosures was divisive. The fallout reached everyone from the governor, whose PR people tried to spin the damage by explaining that photo ops with Jefferies didn’t mean they were bosom buddies, to individual families like the McConnels, whose son, Ethan, wandered onto the museum overlook and was threatened by security guard Gage Shipman.
Andie told Diane she heard from Mrs. McConnel that she and her husband might divorce. The policeman friend of Mr. McConnel’s buddy, Barrel, turned out to be one of Jefferies’ hires. Mr. McConnel, who had voted for Jefferies based on his law-and-order stance, now felt betrayed and humiliated, and his wife was not kind. Like a lot of people, she couldn’t resist the I-told-you-so’s.
Frank and his department came out well. Caleb’s computer was a gold mine—literally. It had every single thing in it Frank needed to untangle Jefferies’ empire. Caleb gave Frank a flash drive containing a total copy of the information. He seemed to understand that Rosewood might not be eager to share with Atlanta. Caleb gave David all his algorithms to ponder. David, a lover of algorithms, was bubbly with excitement.
Janice Warrick never discovered who the shadow man was on the security tape.
Rikki was the most disappointed. She thought she sent a chunk of Jefferies’ money to her own account in the Caribbean via her cell phone, which she threw in the river along with the hard disk. She had no way of knowing that Caleb had already emptied all but a thousand dollars from each account. He put the money in a holding account for the authorities to figure out what to do with. The prison guards said Rikki stomped around her cell for days ranting at her bad luck.
Jennifer Jeffcote-Smith received an undisclosed sum from the city, but she wasn’t happy either. Her reputation was tarnished by her proximity to the Jefferies gang, and her husband’s relatives were as relentless with her as Mrs. McConnel was with her husband. Diane had seen her one last time in passing at the post office as Jennifer was leaving town. Her in-laws were laughing, telling all their friends to move to Georgia, where they pay you a lot of money for being stupid. Jennifer was probably heading for a divorce too, thought Diane.
Many on the city council wanted Douglas Garnett to run for mayor. But he really liked being chief of detectives, and Edward Van Ross reinstated him. Gar-nett and his wife sent Diane a bouquet of red roses.
Former mayor Walter Sutton was as disappointed as Rikki Gillinick. The citizens of Rosewood did not want him as mayor again. They somehow blamed him too for the corruption in city hall, though Diane wasn’t sure why. Edward Van Ross was pressed into service for a term as mayor. He told everyone it was just until Rosewood got back to normal. Diane wasn’t sure that would ever happen. A group of people actually approached her to run in the special election. Diane couldn’t think of anything she had rather not do than run for mayor. She politely declined. Curtis Crabtree died on the way to the hospital. Shipman clung to life and slowly recovered in the prison hospital. Caleb told Diane and Frank that Crabtree and Shipman tormented him over how they cut up his friend Malcolm and fed him into the wood chipper. The one nice thing that Jefferies had done for Caleb was to tell Curtis and Shipman to lay off— but, Caleb added, that was just so his work wouldn’t be affected.
Diane had asked Colin Prehoda to take Caleb’s case. He loved it. Diane had invited him to lunch in her office and told him about Caleb and what happened.
‘‘I can get the kid a medal,’’ he said. ‘‘My wife can get him a movie.’’
Diane frowned. ‘‘For himself, he needs to know that killing wasn’t the answer,’’ said Diane. ‘‘He doesn’t need to go the rest of his life thinking there was no alternative. Everyone needs to know you can’t get off scot-free for murder, no matter what the circumstances.’’
‘‘Was there an alternative?’’ said Prehoda. ‘‘Where could he go in his situation? It’s a valid question, one I can make the jury understand. Have you talked with Vanessa lately? If Jefferies wasn’t already dead, she said she would have killed him. She said she might just dig him up and shoot him anyway. People can’t just go around doing what he did and not expect someone to bite back really hard.’’
‘‘I’m talking about—’’ began Diane.
‘‘I know, you’re talking about the kid’s soul. But my job is to give him a good defense, and I cannot do otherwise. You’ll have to let his grandparents look after his soul,’’ said Prehoda.
‘‘I suppose. He’s a kid with a conscience, and I want him to be able to be happy sometime in his life,’’ said Diane. ‘‘He has a real talent. I don’t think he can ever be happy without some kind of accounting.’’
‘‘Redemption requires atonement?’’ Prehoda shrugged. ‘‘That’s not my jurisdiction. Right now, settle for his freedom. I can get him out of hard jail time, even though it looks like he premeditated the murders. Jefferies and his gang didn’t give him any options, and they were relentless in their threats to his family. It doesn’t help the prosecution that Jefferies had Karen McNevin killed. A lot of us liked her. A lot of us like you and Vanessa. The discovery that he planned to kill the two of you isn’t sitting well with anyone. The kid’s not going to jail over this.’’
‘‘Probably not,’’ she said.
‘‘Besides, you have no evidence physically linking him to any of the murders. You only have his hypothetical story about what happened,’’ said Prehoda.
Prehoda had been right. He made a deal with the DA that Caleb would get intensive counseling and five years’
probation. But Diane worried, as did Frank, especially when they found out the college classmate Caleb was on a date with that fateful night was Star, Frank’s daughter. Frank sort of freaked out when he learned that. Jefferies had a file that detailed how Curtis had killed Judge McNevin. Prehoda was right about that too. People were very angry about a well-respected judge being murdered. Suddenly everyone in town knew who John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Hobbes were and what the concept of social contract meant. It was a strange time for Rosewood.
‘‘Here’s a dilemma for you,’’ Diane told Prehoda. ‘‘Bryce killed Edgar Peeks. He confessed, and we have the evidence. But he also keeps saying he was framed. We thought he had just gone nuts until I realized that we have the bloodstains on the forceps—along with his bloody thumbprints on them—but we don’t have a trail left by the incriminating bloody bullet that was supposed to have rolled under the chest. I think Bryce did take his bullet away from the scene, but Rikki, in her sneaky little fashion, had a spent bullet from Bryce’s gun that she swabbed in the blood and brain tissue before she dropped it in the evidence bag. That would make not all the evidence against him true, but he did do it.’’
‘‘ ‘For ’tis the sport to have the enginer / Hoist with his own petar,’ ’’ was Prehoda’s only comment, and they enjoyed the rest of the meal talking about the upcoming Neanderthal exhibit.
Diane managed to get her world back to what passed for normal, even if it would take a long time for Rosewood to get back on track. She didn’t think about Jefferies or any of them when she went down to check on how the Pleistocene Room was coming along.
Kendel Williams, the assistant director, had brought back an almost complete Neanderthal skeleton. The brown bones lay in a glass case like Snow White waiting to be awakened. Neva was working on a facial reconstruction to be shown at the event.
