chapter forty-six

The patents gave us both a new potential motive and hard evidence that linked Lee’s research to the blood spot I’d found in Britney Devonshire Bible. Both deaths were tied up in this mess that led back to Piedmont Sr. and the Aztekas. Maclaren could help me sort out what the patents meant to Lee and his heirs. But, since his company had an inherent interest in that research, it would be good to know as much as possible about Lee’s work beforehand.

Jim still hadn’t returned my call, so I put in a Hail Mary to Denver on my glove phone.

“Any news on the de-encryption of the Lee files?” I blurted out as soon as Denver’s holo-image appeared.

She looked wan and was missing her characteristic spark. Denver’s hair was a dull brownish black, minus her usual vibrant colors. Moreover, her black lacquered nails were chipped.

She didn’t give me her usual grief either. Just stared at me with flat empty eyes.

I hesitated.“What’s the matter? You look like you haven’t slept in three nights—for all the wrong reasons.”

Denver shook her head. “Nothing.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Let’s stick to the encryption.”

“From your face, I’m guessing it’s a no go.”

“Guess again.” In slow motion Denver synched our wireless projection modes so I could see the mathematical algorithms from the file she was reviewing floating in the air before me. “It’s a matryosha encryption. Pretty fucking ingenious actually.”

“Matryosha? You mean those Russian nesting dolls?”

Denver nodded. “Lee layered his encryption. Layers within layers.”

As she started to speak, tears began to roll down her pale cheeks. Denver never cried, not even when she’d been arrested.

I leaned in towards her floating image. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” She wiped the tears with an angry swipe of the back of her hand, but they continued to flow. “Lee used a fucking complex labyrinthine encryption. By the way, the flash dot’s really an external hard drive. He hid the data stored on the drive by changing the suffix at the end of the name of key files.”

“Denver.”

“He used the end part of the file address that tells the computer what software program it needs to open the file.” Denver’s words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush like somebody on a coke rant. “Lee used the suffix ‘.rar,’ which relates to a type of software that reduces the size of a file. But they were actually created with a different program, Totally Private, which enabled each file to run as a separate, encryption-protected virtual hard drive. Without the correct password, the files were completely unintelligible.”

“Denver.” I reached out to touch her arm, but of course only managed to disturb the pixels.

“One of those numbers you gave me was the password and the other one was the file name,” she said.

I let her babble on.

“You’d think that would be enough, but even when I cracked that, I couldn’t read the shit ’cuz he enciphered the text again. It was all scrambled eggs. Totally unreadable until I unscrambled it. There was a disguised file on the external hard drive that looked like it was meant for viewing photos. It wasn’t. The file really consisted of coded text with a set of instructions for using a spreadsheet containing a purpose-built formula to decipher the scrambled text. Once I saw that, I knew we’d passed go.”

“So what was worth all this security?” I said. “What’s the file say?”

“I cracked the code,” Denver replied. “Doesn’t mean I can read the shit. Look.” For a second her usual snarky tone had reasserted itself. But the uncontrolled tears started again with her next breath. She opened up Lee’s file for me to see. Words from the file floated in the air before us—

“Neurofibrillary tangles . . . beta-amyloid plaques . . . amyloid precursor protein gene . . . disintegrated dendrites . . .” I said. “His Alzheimer’s X research.” This had to be the patent material.

“The final nesting doll.” Denver sniffed. “Isn’t that ironic.”

“Except,” I said, smiling, “this time we’ve got people who can read the Russian.” I sent the file to Jim Mar at the crime lab.

Denver didn’t respond. I kept staring at her stricken face. “Tell me what’s wrong. Is it Diamond Dog?”

Denver sighed and shook her head. She switched files. The new file consisted of a single sentence under the heading listing Denver’s name. The sentence read “test results positive.”

“My family insisted the D-Dog get a full genetic read-out before the wedding. So, I got one too, to keep him company. He passed with flying colors.”

A pair of icy hands reached into my chest and squeezed all the air out of my lungs.

Denver had tested positive for Alzheimer’s X. The diagnosis meant the twenty-one-year-old had three to five years before the disease turned her into one of those zombies walking the streets of L.A.

“Have you told Diamond Dog?”

“Can’t,” she said. “What if he dumps me?”

“He won’t.”

The tears had started again, silently sliding down her cheeks. “You’re usually a better liar, Piedmont.”