My stomach sank. Everything was just too damned hard right now.
“Does that mean you can’t do it?” I said.
“I can download some software, but it’s pricey. Or let me talk to the person who owns the site.”
“You know her—it’s the Body Artist from Club Gouge. And she’s skipped.” I explained what had happened the previous night. “So is it worth going down to the club on the chance her machine is still there? Anyone could have walked off with it, including the Body Artist herself. But the point is, she says someone took over the system from her and changed the password. I don’t know why she would lie about that. But even if she did, would we be able to get the password from her machine?”
Radke fiddled with a pencil, thinking it over.
“Do you know what her ISP is?” he asked.
“The website is run through WordPress,” I said, “but I don’t know who the service provider is.”
“That’s what we could get from her computer easier than by me trying to hack, and if I had the ISP, then I could maybe start figuring out who’s controlling the site right now.”
“So. Once more into the breach, and all that.” I tried to sound jaunty about going back into the biting air. My earlier nap had given me a brief second wind, but it was rapidly dying down. “Petra, you want to call it a day?”
“Are you kidding?” My cousin let out a gust of laughter. “This is the fun part, where you show me how you pick locks and everything.”
“Youthful high spirits,” I murmured to Radke.
We were putting on parkas and lacing up boots when John Vishneski called from the hospital to see if I’d found Chad’s vest.
“I didn’t see any vests, just a pile of—” I broke off mid-sentence. His body armor. Chad thought of it as a vest.
“Mr. Vishneski, I think Chad may have meant his body armor. It looks as though someone took that, along with his computer and his cell phone, the night Nadia Guaman was killed. The guys who left him to die in Mona’s bed dumped something in the garbage behind her building. I can’t prove it was the armor, but that’s my best guess right now. Chad apparently cut into one of the supplemental shields; I found the pouch and some of the special filler in the bottom of his duffel bag.”
“Why would anyone throw out his vest?” Vishneski demanded.
“No idea. Chad might have cut into the shield out of anger or frustration at losing his unit. But I’m wondering if he sewed something valuable into it when he was overseas and cut it open when he—”
“Like what?” Vishneski asked, again demanding.
“I don’t know. Something small—a microchip, a diamond. In case it’s still in the armor cover, maybe stuck inside to the fabric or lost in the sand or nanochips or whatever this filler is, I’m going to take it up to the forensic lab I use and get them to go over it with one of their scanners. In the meantime, if Chad wakes up and asks again for his vest, tell him it’s in a vault, that it will be safe until he gets home. If it’s weighing on his mind, we don’t want him worrying about it.”
I paused, then added, “It would be best not to spread the word that Chad seems to be improving. Whoever framed Chad for Nadia Guaman’s murder, we don’t want them getting another shot at him.”
Vishneski gave a bark of laughter. “I don’t know why I’m acting so surprised. We hired you, Mona and me, because we didn’t believe our boy could’ve shot that gal. It’s just—you’re making it sound like he’s in the middle of some big-ass conspiracy, and Chad, he doesn’t know any secrets. Are you sure about all this?”
“It’s guesswork,” I said. “But if, well, if someone came after him again while we were trying to prove my guesses, that would be a very bad way to prove me right. Just to be on the safe side, I’d like to get some bodyguards in place at the ICU. It’ll require cooperation from the medical staff, and I’m not sure how willing they’ll be, but there are a couple of guys I use when I need muscle. Very reliable.”
“I’ve got friends,” Vishneski interrupted. “Construction’s slow, and I know plenty of guys who’d be glad to look after my boy.”
“You should clear it with the head of the ICU. She’ll be more sympathetic