Josh asked himself, what would I do if I were Helen? This seemed like a ridiculous question; he had no experience in extortion and murder, though last night’s events were a start. She had been willing to kill his sister just to prove a point. As Josh sat on the couch with CNN playing in the background and the thought that Allison was safe for the moment, he put away distractions and false optimism. What would he do if he were Helen? The answer was obvious: he would get the design and get rid of the guy who had caused all this trouble. She and Crawford must have been smart and successful up to now. Josh probably wasn’t the first person to cause a problem, if you could call beating a man to death a problem, and since they were still in business it meant they knew how to handle troublemakers. He’d never seen himself as much of a threat to anyone, but he understood that killing Crawford, even in self-defense, made him more than a nuisance. Helen was going to get the design and kill him.
Josh couldn’t accept that as an outcome. The part of him that had surged to the surface in fighting Crawford knew the answer, knew what he needed to do. But the sane part that had been in control for forty-two years struggled. He didn’t believe he could just kill Helen in cold blood – no matter the danger, that wasn’t part of him. But as he pictured Crawford in Allison’s room and imagined what might have happened there, he knew this was all part of defending his sister’s and his own life. He began to justify what was coming. He wouldn’t spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.
Josh flipped off the T.V. and went to his office. The hard copy of the Ventrica design was under a corner of the carpet behind the desk, his feeble attempt to hide it. He pulled it out and started feeding it into the scanner connected to the computer. It took just over thirty minutes to convert the 100+ pages into an electronic file on his laptop. He put a thumb drive into his computer and copied the Ventrica file onto it. Three minutes later he had erased any trace of the design from his computer. Most people didn’t know erasing something from your computer didn’t really make it go away, it just marked as available the spot on your hard drive that still contained the erased files. That meant the computer could store something else there if need be. But the file you thought you erased was still there until something new was “written” onto that same space. Josh knew how to delete every remnant of a file and made sure he did this time. Considering the path he was on, someone eventually would be looking at his computer and he didn’t want any trace of this crime – corporate espionage – to add to his problems. The scanner had no memory in it, so the only evidence was the hard copy and the thumb drive. He used the shredder to turn the Ventrica design into a thousand strips of paper, then filled a cleaning bucket with bleach and turpentine and soaked the pages until the ink had faded and the paper turned to sludge. This was more effective than burning; forensic cops could pull words off of what looked like ashes. He flushed the muck down the toilet, though it took twenty flushes to empty the entire bucket. Josh had covered his tracks as best he could.
Plenty of time to do what he needed to do and still get to Zuma beach. Josh quickly dressed in jeans and a pullover, laced up the sneakers he always wore when not at the office, and slipped the drive in his back pocket. Ten minutes later he was at the Kinko’s on Ventura Blvd. in Encino. He had a plan in mind and was energized. But as he walked up to the store, Josh caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length glass door. He looked haggard, but focused. It was a look he got when in the middle of a project that consumed his thinking. It hit him hard, standing there with his hand on the door. This wasn’t some intellectual exercise or huge project he was running. This was serious in a way he had never experienced. Despite the seeming cleverness of the plan, the confidence from past successes, Josh felt inadequate. Who was he to play this kind of dangerous game? He didn’t even really know if Allison was safe, right now, this minute. He had dispatched her to a safe place and moved on, but how did he know Helen hadn’t been waiting, hadn’t followed her and kidnapped Allison at the gas station or at a stop light? He thought about calling the police, standing there frozen. Suddenly the door swung open and almost clipped Josh in the forehead. A kid with a nose ring, carrying a bunch of flyers with a picture of a guitar spun through the gap to avoid cracking Josh’s head open with the door and said “whoa! ‘scuse me, dude.” Still holding the door, Josh watched him walk away. Goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit. He tried to concentrate and went into Kinko’s.
Josh sat down in front of one of the dozen computer terminals they rent out by the minute and signed in using a bogus name. Connecting to the Internet, he went to www.hotmail.com and created an email account. If anyone ever tried to trace it, all they would know was that someone who called him or herself H. Crawford created it at 12:47 p.m. on Saturday, September 23rd on this computer. He took the drive from his back pocket and slipped it into the port on the computer. For the next thirty minutes, Josh surfed a dozen Internet sites containing warez, illegal software programs created by hackers who took pride in breaking copyright law and writing nasty viruses for fun and profit. He found what he was looking for and downloaded a complex but elegant program created by a high school student in Indonesia. It took him another hour to pour through the code and make the changes he needed. Warez programs didn’t come with user guides and how-to instruction books. Josh relied on his early training as a programmer and his more recent experience tracking down and catching hackers for clients to modify the program. As a last step, he combined this new program with the Ventrica design file. It would take a fairly sophisticated expert to know there was now a virus lurking in the file containing the document.
Using the new Hotmail account he had set up, Josh emailed the Ventrica design to himself at this same account. It showed up instantly in the In-box, sitting there waiting for someone to open it. He didn’t.
Logging out of the computer, Josh paid cash to the kid at the counter and left. Before he got to the car, he twisted open the plastic case with the tiny thumb drive in it. The solid-state piece of technology had no moving parts. He picked up a chunk of cement that had fallen off the parking spot divider and hammered the drive until it was just a tangle of flattened metal. The only illicit copy of the Ventrica design was now sitting on an anonymous Hotmail account known only to Josh.
Enough time had passed that Allison should have made it to George’s by now. Before she left, Allison said George sounded happy to have her visit, though he suspected this wasn’t a vacation. She promised Josh she wouldn’t tell him what was going on, but Josh was pretty sure she’d eventually tell him there was danger. That would get George’s attention and he would be even more vigilant, if that were possible. Josh stopped at one of the dwindling number of pay phones on the street and shoved in enough change to reach George’s cell phone. It didn’t ring, going straight into voicemail. There was no introductory message, no voice, just a beep. Paranoid George.
“Hey, George. It’s Josh, Josh Barnes. I wanted to be sure Allison got there safely. I appreciate you giving her a chance to see what it’s like to, uh, spend some time in the woods. Anyway, when you get this, don’t call me back…I…I won’t be home and my cell is, um, not working. I’ll try you back.”
Josh hung up, feeling foolish. He hadn’t planned this part out. George shouldn’t call him just in case Helen had tapped Josh’s line or somehow could get a copy of his phone records. She’d see George’s number or hear the conversation and Josh didn’t want any link to George. He’d have to figure something out, use a friend’s phone or buy one of those disposable cell phones you can get at a vending machine at the airport. His stomach hurt and the bright sunlight made his head pound. Josh stopped and leaned against the corner of the brick building in front of him. His headache was getting worse and the smell of urine on the side of the building didn’t help. He began to walk to his car again when the pay phone he had just used rang. Josh bolted back and grabbed the phone.