The Electrician's Code by Clarissa Draper

Author:Clarissa Draper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781937178567
Publisher: Wido Publishing
Published: 2014-06-02T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

The next morning, Sophia started her weekend reviewing the Elaine Smith house tapes. Crystal had come in early to go over Smith’s computer which upon start up at the house, had self-destructed. Somebody smart, somebody really smart, could not only hack into the surveillance software but managed to remotely destroy evidence. Sophia was pissed. She would find the culprit if it killed her.

On the screen, Sophia watched the footage from the living room. Miles had just left and Elaine had walked into the kitchen. The cards lay out on the table. Did he know Elaine was about to be murdered? Would he sit down to a calm game of solitaire if he knew? Besides, he was rubbish at solitaire.

There were two layers of piles. Four neatly stacked piles along the top row with a top card of a queen of diamonds, a seven of clubs, a king of diamonds, and a joker; and seven neatly stacked piles on the bottom row: three of hearts, seven of hearts, five of clubs, six of spades, seven of spades, nine of hearts, and a four of spades.

Why was there a joker on the top row? That didn’t make any sense. She took her mobile from her jacket pocket and pulled up a web browser. She hadn’t played much solitaire, preferring Maj Jong to a card game other than bridge, but she knew the joker didn’t belong. She was right. Although the piles were correctly arranged, Miles should not have been playing with a joker.

“So, what did you find on the computer?” Liam came and sat down beside her.

“Crystal’s working on it.” She pointed to a small conference room where Crystal had the computer hooked up like an intensive care patient. From the window, Sophia could see her friend signing a string of filthy words.

He leaned over and looked at the display on her mobile. “Really, you think this is the time to be playing games?” Taking her arm in his hand, he was about to pull her from the seat but she pulled her arm back.

“This is important. I think this might be it, anyway. It might explain the camera.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I think this might be the shipping information.”

In a search engine, she pulled up the International Container Bureau’s international standard for identification of shipping containers and looked over the requirement—four letters, seven numbers. This could be it, she thought, and became excited. There was a way to be sure. She could calculate the check digit. Slowly she went through the formula, multiplying and subtracting, until she verified that four was indeed the correct last digit.

“Liam? Remember I told you that we feared an intruder on the network?”

“No, not really . . .”

“Well, we feared it nonetheless, maybe we didn’t tell you for fear you would panic and it turned out to be nothing. Now, however, we believe it to be related to the case in some way. We’re not sure it’s Placko’s men or belonging to the buyer. Either way, it’s not us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.