He took a minute to check the computer for data. That wasn't really his thing, but Nadia had been teaching him. From what he could tell, this was a basic terminal, mostly just for the security system cameras. Angela must keep her personal and professional files elsewhere, probably on a laptop.

As Jack prowled the house, he made mental notes of all the security enhancements needed to make it safer. He had to admit someone had done a decent job. If the killer was, as they expected, a disgruntled client, then he wasn't going to have Jack's skill set. Still, Jack wasn't betting a woman's life on that. The best scenario would be the one Cypher wanted--getting Angela to a safe place in the city. If she insisted on staying here, though, these security gaps had to be fixed.

As Jack walked through the house, he didn't snoop--this was already an invasion of a victim's privacy--but he couldn't help forming a fuller picture of Angela Kamaka. A visual picture, for one thing, from the photographs. Photos of a woman with her parents, with friends, with lovers. One figure featured in enough pictures to tell him this was Angela. She looked mid-thirties. Brown skin. Average height. Sturdy build. Always with a smile, one that lit up an otherwise plain face.

He focused his attention in her office, particularly on the filing cabinet. It was one you could buy at any business supply store, with a lock that only took a hairpin to open. He sprang that and looked inside.

The top drawer held personal information, and he flipped through that, skimming the carefully marked file folders to see whether there was anything that caught his eye. He checked the one for her mortgage papers and her income tax. A person's financial situation often suggested alternative answers. Like the woman who'd tried to hire him to kill her supposedly abusive husband . . . and it turned out she was neck-deep in gambling debt, and her husband wasn't eager to empty their 401(k) to pay off her bookies.

In the second drawer, he found Angela's legal files. Not the full files--those would be in her office. Here she only kept copies of the most pertinent information, presumably in case she needed it while working evenings or weekends. Past clients took up the rear three-quarters of the drawer. She kept the current ones in front. Those were the files he lifted out.

As he pulled the files, he dislodged a legal pad. On it, Angela had been making notes, doing a little detective work of her own. Jack set the files down and leafed through the notes.

Angela had made a list of all the cases she'd taken over from Charles Atom--the injured lawyer. Then she'd cross-referenced that list with another one, presumably the names of people who also had some connection to the murdered social worker and judge. Three suspects arose. Jack pulled those files. As he took pictures of the pages, he skimmed them.

Suspect number one--Steve Forrest--was what Jack would call a classic angry white man. A middle-aged guy who ran a successful local electronics business, only to have his wife object to his sleeping around. Not only did she leave him, but she also expected half the money he'd earned while she'd stayed home to raise their kids. The social worker--Mindy Lang--had gotten involved when their seventeen-year-old didn't want to visit Forrest anymore. Then the judge--Albert Kim--had forced Forrest to divulge details of investments he'd tried to hide. Charles Atom had been the opposing lawyer in Forrest's divorce case. Last month, Forrest had shown up at his ex-wife's house and told her that if she didn't want to be responsible for more deaths, she should agree to his divorce terms. She'd captured that threat on tape, which bumped Forrest to the top of the suspect list.

Next was Louis Stanton, an engineer whose wife had left him, claiming "irreconcilable differences." Just a breakdown of the marriage. It had started amicably enough--a fair division of assets and joint custody of the kids. Then Stanton got a job offer in California, and his wife wasn't willing to leave Hawaii--she ran a business in Honolulu--so Judge Kim ordered that if Stanton wanted to retain joint custody, he had to remain here. Stanton tried taking the kids to California anyway. He lost joint custody and started having all his visits monitored by Mindy Lang. Clearly the problem was that the family courts favored women, Stanton decided, and he launched a men's rights group, dedicated to dismantling the current system--"by force if necessary."

Suspect number three was a woman who'd been denied joint custody of her children based on prescription drug dependence. Sheila Walling had a run-in with Mindy Lang over visitation: she'd been late returning her kids, and on the urging of Atom, Mindy had advised the judge to reprimand Walling, which he had. Unlike the other two, Jack saw no indication that Walling had threatened anyone involved, either directly or obliquely. While Walling was a chemist by trade--which might help with the bombs--she seemed an odd choice of suspects . . . until Jack found a note deeper in her file. Six months ago, Walling had been the prime suspect in the murder of her ex-husband's new girlfriend, who'd been killed with a gift-wrapped IED. The police hadn't found enough evidence to charge Walling, but it was obvious that they'd taken this into consideration when looking for a person committing grudge murders . . . using IEDs.

Jack flipped through the other cases that Angela had taken from Atom. Nothing else stuck out, but he knew Nadia would want to be thorough, so he snapped shots of those pages, too. Then he went back to the three prime suspects.

The cops would be investigating all of them--looking for the missing evidence that would let them lay charges. Which was a perfectly rational way to go about it, but Jack wasn't a cop, and really, he preferred a more direct approach.

Time to go and see a man about a grudge.

Chapter Nine

Nadia

Angela Kamaka was a partner at a downtown Honolulu law firm. In this case, "partner" just meant she was one of the two lawyers who worked there along with a support staff.

When I first walked in, the front desk was empty, but I'd barely crossed the floor before a young man zipped out from a side room and ducked behind the desk.

"I'd like to speak to Ms. Kamaka," I said.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No, but I'm hoping she'll have a few moments to speak to me."

He gave me a quick once-over, and his lips tightened. "If you are a reporter--"

"I'm not here looking for a story. A mutual friend sent me. I just need a moment of her time."

He picked up the phone and turned away for a brief murmured conversation. Then, with an abrupt wave, he walked off down the hall, leaving me to follow. When we reached a closed door, he stopped and said, "I have security on speed dial."

"Under the circumstances, I'm glad to hear it."

The door opened before he could knock, and Angela stood there, one hand on her hip.

"You do know I can hear you, right, Richard?"

"As I have said before, we need to invest in better soundproofing." He walked away, raising his watch as he did, a reminder he'd be watching how much of his boss's time I consumed.

"Ignore him," Angela said as she closed the door behind me. "Everyone here is a bit overprotective these days."

"Better than the alternative." I turned to face her. "And because I know you're busy, I'm going to use that as a segue to get straight to the point. It's not just your office staff that's feeling protective. I'm a personal bodyguard, hired by a concerned third party."

Tags: Kelley Armstrong Nadia Stafford Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net