THREE
“WHATDAYA THINK?” Ed Phillips asked Ryan.
“Too soon to tell, but so far I’m not finding much.”
Ryan had arrived at Hayley Fordham’s loft to discover the authorities were still there. He wasn’t surprised. He’d thought releasing the crime scene as early as Meg indicated was unlikely. His bad luck had not run out when he’d agreed to help Meg. The first person he saw when he walked up was Phillips.
The special agent worked with Ryan in the L.A. office. Phillips was a senior criminal intelligence analyst while Ryan was in cyber crimes, but they knew each other from previous cases. Phillips had been sent to represent the FBI on the Joint Terrorism Task Force that Ryan had predicted would investigate this case. A car bombing so close to an airport was a huge red flag for a terrorist act.
Phillips had immediately enlisted Ryan to check Hayley Fordham’s computer and introduced him to the local detectives investigating the murder. He also spoke to the ATF guys, who were still called ATFers even though their official title was now Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“This is the computer guru who cracked the Rosier case,” Phillips announced to the team gathered in the makeshift command post set up in the ground-floor garage of Hayley Fordham’s loft. This introduction wowed the group. The Rosier case had been a fraud scam that made headlines early last year. The information that hung Carleton Rosier had been encrypted and buried on his corporation’s computers. Ryan had figured out how the con artist had created two sets of books on his computers.
“What have they got?” Ryan asked as he kept punching keys and concentrating on Hayley’s twenty-one inch screen. Phillips was standing behind him, watching. This was annoying but Ryan didn’t say anything because he needed to find out as much as he could about Hayley.
“Nothin’ unless ATF finds out something.”
ATF bomb experts spent so much time training that even though the FBI had their own team, they took a backseat to ATF. They would be looking for bomb-making equipment, although Ryan thought it was unlikely that Hayley made the bomb that killed her. Yet stranger things had happened. The bomb could have been intended for someone else and she’d accidentally detonated it.
“Nothing like this case on VICAP,” Ryan said, referring to the Violent Crimes Apprehension Program that maintained a massive database on crimes at their headquarters in Quantico.
Phillips shook his head. “Whoo-ee, this is one for the books. We get two, maybe three car bombings a year, most of them along the border. Mexican cartels have a buncha’ crazy muthafuckers who rig bombs.”
Phillips had grown up in Alabama and his roots could be heard when he talked and in the expressions he used, which was unusual at the Bureau. They encouraged the neutral cadence of newscasters. Accent aside, Phillips was one of the sharpest guys Ryan had encountered at the FBI.
“Could Hayley Fordham have been involved with drugs? Should I be looking for something like that on her computer?”
Phillips shrugged. “I doubt it, but shee-it. Who knows?”
“Are we sure that it was Hayley who was killed?”
“Ninety-nine percent sure. She used her credit card just minutes before her dadgummed car blew sky high. The license plate flew off or we wouldn’t have been able to ID the car. No body parts. She was vaporized.”
Ryan imagined the dress that Meg was coming to pick out tomorrow. Evidently, the poor woman had no idea her niece’s body was dust. “What about the security cameras? What do they show?”
“The camera at the entrance nearest the car was on the fritz but the ones in the restaurant clearly show the woman Trent Fordham identified as his half-sister, Hayley. She had drinks with an unidentified female friend, then got in her car and yow-zer. That’s all she wrote.”
“What does the friend say?”
Phillips quirked one dark eyebrow. “The brother didn’t recognize the woman and the locals haven’t tracked her down yet.” He sounded as if he didn’t have much confidence in the police.
Ryan stared at the computer screen as he tapped a few keys. His mind was on the intriguing face in the photograph. Hayley was something else, and according to her aunt, talented and smart. Who would want her dead?
They were on the loft’s third floor, which Hayley used as an office/studio. The small desk with her computer was a fire hazard of notes and sketches. There was a work table with some fabric laid out. Two empty easels faced the twelve-foot floor-to-ceiling windows that provided natural light during the day. Racks of oil tubes and brushes were on the wall next to pegs for oilcloth to cover artwork and paint-splattered smocks. Several completed oils were stacked against the far wall.
Ryan again thought about what Meg had told him about her niece. Hayley was the clothing designer for Surf’s Up, the family company. Except for the fabric on the table, this place looked more like an artist’s studio. But hey, what did he know?
Hayley did have a CADCAM with a clothing design program loaded on her computer. There were lots of designs in the archives; some of them were downright weird. He didn’t see much else but he hadn’t checked her e-mails or looked for trapdoors.
“We’re cutting out,” the ATFers told them.
“Any sign of explosives around here?” Ryan asked over his shoulder. “Or drugs?”
“Nothing except a half-full bottle of prescription sleeping pills.”
“I think the guys from the office and the police are ready to pull out, too,” Phillips told him. “You almost finished?”
He was, but Ryan wanted time alone to look around the place. “Nah. I’ll be awhile. Go on. See if you can get me cleared to stay.”
“No problem. I already called the office and had you put on the case.” He patted Ryan’s shoulder. “Guess your vacation is over until you check out this computer. Catch ya later.”
Detective Wells, the lead detective with the Costa Mesa police, came up, asking, “Anything?”
“I’m still checking. It’ll take me a few hours.”
Wells paused a second, then said, “I understand you’re a friend of the family.”
Ryan wasn’t sure where or how he’d obtained this information. “Not the family exactly. My father is close with Meg Amboy, who is Hayley’s aunt.”
“We interviewed her.”
Ryan turned away from the computer to ask, “You personally or one of your men?”
Wells, a dapper-looking older man with silver hair and intelligent blue eyes shrugged. “I sent one of the guys. Didn’t seem likely that she’d know much.”
“She’s a pretty sharp gal. Made a fortune on her own.”
“What’s she saying in private?”
“She believes it might be a member of the family. They own a local surf store that sells their clothing nationwide. It was started by the father who was killed
