Life's a Beach Then You Die Read online

  Chapter Two

  Asleep and dreaming I was in a concert hall, I heard the music start, but the orchestra played only two notes. A high note followed by a low note. The combination sounded familiar and the two notes played repeatedly, a high note and a low note. As I woke up, I realized the two-note song was the “Ding Dong” of my front doorbell.

  My glasses stared at me from my night table. After putting them on, I jumped out of bed, pulled on running shorts left on the floor and ran for the door. An oblivious Mariel snored softly, her head buried under the cover. She was such a tiny lump under the blanket; I almost couldn’t tell she was there.

  I barely rounded the corner from the bedroom to the hall, then the one from the hall to the living room. Narrowly avoiding these collisions, heading for the foyer to answer the bell, I felt guilty being asleep when other people were out of bed. It was silly, but that’s how I felt. My parents must have imprinted this on me as a kid. I was never a morning person. For a long time, I battled with my parents about getting up for school. The fights ended one morning when my father poured a pitcher of water on my head to wake me up.

  Ed was at the door. His head went back and his eyes widened when he saw a shirtless, bleary-eyed old man with bed head hair. I knew I made an impact on him, but I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed about waking me up or disturbed by hiring someone who looked this way and was still in bed at 9:30 am.

  “Here’s Ray’s computer. Kathleen signed the release, it’s in the case. Um, I hope I’m not too early. I came straight from the police station.”

  I assured him there wasn’t a problem. Actually, any time before noon, visitors had a good chance of catching us asleep. We preferred later hours and if no one interrupted, we kept them.

  “When I picked up the computer, the Detective told me the M.E. confirmed it’s a homicide. There weren’t any skid marks because Ray died before the crash. He had a heart attack but no history of heart disease. They found nothing in his cardiac system to explain the attack. They’re going to run some more tests… try to see if they can figure out what caused it. Then, maybe, the cops’ll figure out why…and maybe who…”

  He had the notebook case in one hand and a paper coffee cup and a cigarette in the other. His face was red and blotchy and he wore what he had on yesterday. I looked past Ed and saw a silver Mercedes sedan in my driveway. My view wasn’t clear, but I thought I saw a blonde in the passenger seat. I guessed Ed was hung over and upset, anxious to get rid of the notebook and intent on getting to the next thing on his agenda. It probably included more coffee and maybe Alka Seltzer. I took the notebook case. Ed took his leave.

  Eyeglasses are fine if they don’t slide down your nose, fog up when you enter a warm building, get speckled with rain or limit your peripheral vision. Unfortunately, mine did all of these things so I only used them to find my contact lenses. I went into the master bathroom, passed a still sleeping Mariel, placed the notebook on the counter and put in my lenses.

  Once I could see well again, I took the notebook into the third bedroom, which we used as a combination office and secondary guest room. This room contains a TV and a desk for my computer equipment. Against the opposite wall is a sofa bed, which grants the room status as a secondary guest room. The main guest room is next door, furnished with a real bed, another TV, an empty closet and a view of the pool.

  I placed the notebook on the desk and hunted for my gear. Since moving here, I had no need for my forensic tools, so they sat in a box -- somewhere. Inside my office closet, I rifled through the cardboard shipping containers until I found my tool kit. My desktop computer already had the forensic software installed.

  About six months passed since I used these things. It felt odd working with them outside of the lab, but good to use them again. It was a comfortable feeling. I had to admit that I didn’t miss the job but I did enjoy the work.

  Despite what they do on TV, you can’t just turn on a computer without altering important information. Date and time stamps change and the system overwrites space from which you might otherwise obtain evidence. So, my first step would be to create an exact copy of Ray’s disk I could examine without compromising the original.

  I removed the hard disk from Ray’s notebook computer and placed it on my scanner. I needed to record the serial number from its label for my report and this method eliminated any transcription errors I might make reading and writing.

  Then I connected the disk to my desktop computer. I had to place a device in between the two that would protect Ray’s disk against any changes, so I used my write blocker. It’s a connector that allowed my forensic software to read Ray’s disk but which blocked any attempts to write to it.

  Copying would take a while, so I got it started and went to the kitchen. Now, I had a tough decision. Eggs or cereal? I was awake now and there was time enough to cook, so I decided on a cheese, onion and pepper omelet.

  If you like a challenge, try saying “Sharp Shredded Cheddar” three times fast while drunk. I used the Latin coffee, Bustello, advertised as muy sobroso y mas fuerte, (very tasty yet strong) made café con leche (coffee with heated milk) and poured some orange juice.

  The aroma of onions, peppers and strong coffee filled the kitchen. Just as my omelet finished cooking, Mariel staggered out to the kitchen drawn by the smell of the coffee. She wore high-heeled slippers and a baby blue nightgown with white dots that could pass for a sundress. Even without makeup, she looked great.

  With half closed eyes, she gave me that great smile of hers. Without a word, I handed her a cup full of coffee and a glass full of orange juice. She smiled again with half closed eyes and silently staggered back to the bedroom. We had a good night. Content, I peeled a Clementine, put it on my plate alongside my omelet and sat down to eat.

  After breakfast, I checked on Ray’s disk. It was still copying so I showered, shaved and dressed while Mariel did her morning exercises. From the bathroom, I could hear the thumps of her jumping jacks and then the squeaks of the exercise bike. She spent a lot of time on that bike and had the legs to show for it. By now, she should be able to talk. I finished dressing about the time the disk finished copying. Now, I could get to work. I had what examiners called an image, a copy of the notebook disk, on my desktop computer.

  I loaded Ray’s disk image into a forensic program, which would catalog every single one of his files, bypassing any logins or passwords he might have used to secure his computer. Since this process also takes a while, I got a second cup of coffee, went to the living room and watched a movie on the big 58” plasma screen TV.

  Mariel, awake, fed, dressed and made up, came into the living room. She looked good enough to take my eyes off the TV. When I did, I saw she was waving one of my T-shirts at me. “Clean or dirty? I found it on the floor next to the bed.”

  “Oh, that’s from last night. I like to have clothes handy in case I need to get the door in the middle of the night.”

  “Clean or dirty? I’m doing the laundry.”

  “Dirty. I guess laundry waits for no man.”

  “That’s because no man will do it.” She left the room with my shirt.

  I turned up the volume. After a bit of big screen, surround sound bliss, I went back to the office. The disk image completed processing and was ready for examination.

  It took me a few hours, but as requested, I found Ray’s banking and investment accounts. His online passwords were in one of the computer registry files. I also found a number of spreadsheets, emails and other financial documents. The emails showed Ray Kenwood worked in sales for a local division of a worldwide corporation, A. V. Designs. The banking records indicated Ray had a lot more money than you’d think a sales guy would earn but nothing else stood out as unusual.

  One of Ray’s documents was password protected and encrypted. When I made it readable, I saw it contained three columns. The first one was a list of dates, the second consisted of six digit numbers and the third contained six-character combinations of letters an
d numbers. People don’t encrypt documents unless they hold something important, but even after decrypting this one, I had no idea what it meant.

  Ray’s files also included emails, sales brochures, slide show presentations and other documents which appeared work related and had nothing to do with his finances.

  Mariel came into the office. “I’m going to the library to work on my paper.” A former Spanish teacher, she enrolled in a college class on Don Quixote for “fun”.

  “I’m going to go to the library and then I’m going to go the Starbucks on campus or maybe I’ll go to the Starbucks and then to the library. I’ll decide when I get there. Te amo.” She leaned over and kissed me goodbye.

  She had read that book at least three times, once in English, once in Spanish and once in Old Spanish. I guessed she couldn’t get her fill of it. I told her I loved her too and she left.

  I went back to work and wrote a report detailing Ray’s finances. It included the bank names, account numbers and passwords for five different money market accounts, two checking accounts and an online investment account. The money market account records listed Ray’s deposits.

  I found one recurring amount, direct deposit of his paycheck. For a short period, starting recently, another recurring amount was a series of cash deposits. I couldn’t find the source, but it was the same amount each week, indicating the possibility of an additional source of income. Other sporadic deposits were wire transfers of varying amounts.

  Ed would need a copy of the disk as well as the report, but there was more data than would fit on a DVD. If I were working on a regular basis, I would have had a spare hard drive to hold everything. Since I wasn’t, I didn’t.

  However, I did have an almost empty 120 Gb iPod. I decided to copy Ray’s image and my report to my iPod. Later, when Ed paid me, I could copy the iPod contents to Ed’s office computer. I started copying, but like every other part of the examination process, it would take a while. It was a good time to have lunch so I headed for the kitchen.

  Again, I sautéed some onions and peppers but this time covered them with Tofurkey Brand Philly Cheese Steak, a steakless steak, and American cheese. Once the cheese melted, I put the pile on a roll and headed out to the pool to eat my lunch.

  When I lay down on the chaise with my sandwich, I could smell the hibiscus and citrus trees in the yard. So many trees and bushes grew in the yard, you couldn’t see much of the fence surrounding the property. Birds chirped and sang and the water in the pool rippled from the pump action of the pool filter. Boy, what a treat. I retired here just so I could do stuff like this.

  Done with lunch, I checked on my disk copying and found it completed. At this point, back in my old lab, I would have locked up the notebook and disk drive in a safe, but again since I wasn’t working, I didn’t have a safe. When I thought about it, I didn’t think it would be a problem. I keep my house locked and this examination was just to locate assets.

  The job finished, it was time to notify Ed and collect my fee. I called his office and got no answer. I called his cell phone. Again, no reply. A few minutes later, I tried both again. When I got no answers this time, I left messages at each number telling him I finished examining the notebook.

  I had time to kill. It was 76 degrees out and I had a new iPod to take for a run. I put on my trunks, a T-shirt and sandals, grabbed a towel and a water bottle, and left for the beach. When I got to the end of the block, I crossed route A1A, and then the dune crossover to the sand. It was low tide so the beach was wide enough I could run in the surf without dodging the vehicles driving on the sand.

  I dropped my sandals and T-shirt in a heap with my towel and water bottle. George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers roared to life on my new iPod. They played great running music with a good solid beat. When George started singing advice to “Get a haircut and get a real job”, I took off and ran south. I started on the part of the beach where they allow vehicles on the sand, passed Chases on the Beach, a Bar-Restaurant where they’ll serve you drinks in their in ground pool and came to the 27th avenue beach ramp. This is the southernmost point on the beach where you can drive on the sand. Then, the absence of cars makes it easier to run. I wouldn’t have to pay attention to avoid being an accident victim.

  I ran barefoot, dashing into the surf whenever I got too hot. My mind wandered as I ran and I realized it was a lot more fun examining Ray’s notebook than I thought it would be.

  Since I had only one case to do without the pressure of a full-time workload, I was able to enjoy the hunt for answers. I liked figuring things out. I’m hopeless in that I always wants to know the answer to the question why.

  Others have noticed this tendency. One year at an office holiday party, Santa Claus read out a list of holiday wishes for all the staff. He granted me, “Complete understanding.” My first reaction at the time was, “What does he mean by that?”

  I completed the first two miles in 17 minutes and then ran a little longer to make it an even 20 before turning back. I finished the total run in about 40 minutes. I said I ran. I never said I was fast. After a dip in the ocean to cool off, I sat on the sand for a few minutes to rest while I finished off the pint of water.