Read Online Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery by Mark Richard Zubro - Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Richard Zubro
Tags: Fiction, General, Gay, Mystery & Detective, Police, Police Procedural, Gay Men, Chicago (Ill.), Computer Software Industry, Paul (Fictitious Character), Gay Police Officers, Turner
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recognize me. Then I went to work.”
The head engineer was Warren Fortesque. He was young like all the others. He wore a brown sweater vest over a white shirt and faded blue jeans. He was maybe five-foot-six, and might have weighed one hundred and twenty-five pounds.
“This is a great place to work,” he said. “A fabulous place. No computer company anywhere is working on so many different aspects of the future. You hear about the big egos and huge fights at other companies—here we work together. If you have an idea, you go with it. You don’t have to worry about getting start up money. Lots of these companies have engineers who dream fantastic dreams, but those people have no sense of what something is going to cost or if anyone really wants the stuff they make. Here, it doesn’t matter. The goal is to create, to always be on the next cutting edge of technology.”
“Any problems?” Turner asked.
“Never. This place is paradise.”
“What about Eddie Homan?”
“A complete twit. I wish he’d stayed around long enough to get fired.”
“What was he working on before he left?” Turner asked.
“Lots of security programs. Many programs computer users buy contain bugs that affect security. He was an expert at finding hidden viruses and eliminating them.”
Turner asked, “If he was good at getting rid of them, wouldn’t he also be good at inserting them?”
“Sure, but not here. We took too much care. Craig and Brooks were way too smart to trust him with anything vital to the company. Craig and Brooks might be young, but they knew to be careful.”
For the next fifteen minutes, they got nothing further from him but cheery pabulum.
Finally, Turner asked where he’d been this morning. Fortesque claimed to have had an ordinary morning, as he and his wife got ready to go to their respective jobs. She was a school teacher in the north suburbs.
They interviewed six of the other top employees of the firm. Not one was over thirty-five. All said basically the same thing. Lenzati was a very nice man with an awkward way of handling people. But he had a gift for unleashing genius and getting the best out of an employee. Each worked in their creative niche and either knew of no one with whom Lenzati fought, or were unwilling to point to a coworker as a possible killer.
When Turner and Fenwick finished with the interviews, they compared notes.
“What I’ve got,” Fenwick said, “is that this guy was a reasonably nice dweeb and a decent employer who paid well, and who had a pornographic collection which he supplemented with a topping of late night visitors that nobody knew anything about. Can anybody be that ordinary?”
“Besides you?”
“Just remember, when you get your ballot for saint of the millennium, I’ll be on it.”
“You’re going to have a tough campaign.”
“I’m not campaigning. The selection is obvious. Mother Theresa had nothing on me.”
“I always wondered who had something on Mother Theresa,” Turner said, “but if we could leave celestial politics aside for a moment. These people liked the boss, which is not a crime. There’s got to be a few places on the planet where that happens. We just happened to run into the only one on this continent.”
“We need to find an enemy. We need to find someone who knew these people in their personal lives. If we track down this Eddie Homan, I may kiss him. I feel like I’m drowning in a vat of candy with all this saccharine sweetness and light. No one is as good as they all claim Lenzati was.”
6
I like watching people and thinking about what their last moment alive is going to be like. I want to be the one in charge of that moment. I want power over them. I want the cops to be the ones without the power for the first time. I like to watch their eyes as they realize they are going to die.
Back at Lenzati’s home in his electronics room, they met with the computer tech from the department. To Turner the guy looked
The head engineer was Warren Fortesque. He was young like all the others. He wore a brown sweater vest over a white shirt and faded blue jeans. He was maybe five-foot-six, and might have weighed one hundred and twenty-five pounds.
“This is a great place to work,” he said. “A fabulous place. No computer company anywhere is working on so many different aspects of the future. You hear about the big egos and huge fights at other companies—here we work together. If you have an idea, you go with it. You don’t have to worry about getting start up money. Lots of these companies have engineers who dream fantastic dreams, but those people have no sense of what something is going to cost or if anyone really wants the stuff they make. Here, it doesn’t matter. The goal is to create, to always be on the next cutting edge of technology.”
“Any problems?” Turner asked.
“Never. This place is paradise.”
“What about Eddie Homan?”
“A complete twit. I wish he’d stayed around long enough to get fired.”
“What was he working on before he left?” Turner asked.
“Lots of security programs. Many programs computer users buy contain bugs that affect security. He was an expert at finding hidden viruses and eliminating them.”
Turner asked, “If he was good at getting rid of them, wouldn’t he also be good at inserting them?”
“Sure, but not here. We took too much care. Craig and Brooks were way too smart to trust him with anything vital to the company. Craig and Brooks might be young, but they knew to be careful.”
For the next fifteen minutes, they got nothing further from him but cheery pabulum.
Finally, Turner asked where he’d been this morning. Fortesque claimed to have had an ordinary morning, as he and his wife got ready to go to their respective jobs. She was a school teacher in the north suburbs.
They interviewed six of the other top employees of the firm. Not one was over thirty-five. All said basically the same thing. Lenzati was a very nice man with an awkward way of handling people. But he had a gift for unleashing genius and getting the best out of an employee. Each worked in their creative niche and either knew of no one with whom Lenzati fought, or were unwilling to point to a coworker as a possible killer.
When Turner and Fenwick finished with the interviews, they compared notes.
“What I’ve got,” Fenwick said, “is that this guy was a reasonably nice dweeb and a decent employer who paid well, and who had a pornographic collection which he supplemented with a topping of late night visitors that nobody knew anything about. Can anybody be that ordinary?”
“Besides you?”
“Just remember, when you get your ballot for saint of the millennium, I’ll be on it.”
“You’re going to have a tough campaign.”
“I’m not campaigning. The selection is obvious. Mother Theresa had nothing on me.”
“I always wondered who had something on Mother Theresa,” Turner said, “but if we could leave celestial politics aside for a moment. These people liked the boss, which is not a crime. There’s got to be a few places on the planet where that happens. We just happened to run into the only one on this continent.”
“We need to find an enemy. We need to find someone who knew these people in their personal lives. If we track down this Eddie Homan, I may kiss him. I feel like I’m drowning in a vat of candy with all this saccharine sweetness and light. No one is as good as they all claim Lenzati was.”
6
I like watching people and thinking about what their last moment alive is going to be like. I want to be the one in charge of that moment. I want power over them. I want the cops to be the ones without the power for the first time. I like to watch their eyes as they realize they are going to die.
Back at Lenzati’s home in his electronics room, they met with the computer tech from the department. To Turner the guy looked
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