3rd Degree by James Patterson, Andrew Gross

pair had gone cold. Jacobi and Cappy had come back empty after passing her photo around the campus bars across the bay. One thing did pan out, though: the article Cindy put in the Chronicle on X/L. With news crews plastered all over their offices and the threat of a subpoena, I got a message from Chuck Zinn that he wanted to deal. An hour later, he was in my office.
    “You can have your access, Lieutenant. In fact, I'll save you the trouble. Mort did receive a series of e-mails in the past few weeks. The entire board did. None of us took them very seriously, but we put our internal security team on it.”
    Zinn unbuckled his fancy leather case and placed an orange file on the table and pushed it across. “This is all of them, Lieutenant. By date received.”
    I opened the file and a shock resonated through my system.
    To the Board of Directors, X/L Systems:
    On February 15, Morton Lightower, your CEO, sold 762,000 shares of his company stock total-ing $3,175,000.
    On that same day, some 256,000 of your own shareholders lost money, making their net return -87% in the past year.
    35,341 children of the world died from star-vation.
    11,174 people in this country died from disease that were deemed “preventable” with proper medical care.
    That same Wednesday, 4233768 mothers -brought babies into conditions of poverty and hopelessness across the world. In the past 24 months, you have sold off almost $600,000,000 of your own company stock and purchased homes in Aspen and France, returning nothing to the world. We are demand-ing contributions to hunger and world health organizations equal to any further sell-offs. We are demanding that the board of X/L, and the boards of all companies, see beyond the narrow scope of its expansionist strategies to the world beyond, which is being crushed by eco-nomic apartheid.
    This is not a plea. This is a demand.
    Enjoy your wealth, Mr. Lightower. Your little Caitlin is counting on you.
    The message was signed, August Spies.
    I skimmed through the rest of the e-mails. Each was more belligerent. The menu of the world's ills more grievous.
    You're ignoring us, Mr. Lightower. The board has not complied. We intend to act. Your little Caitlin is counting on you.
    “How could you not turn these over to us?” I stared at Zinn. “This whole thing might have been prevented.”
    “In retrospect, I understand how this must appear.” The lawyer hung his head. “But companies receive threats all the time.”
    “This isn't just a threat.” I tossed the e-mails back on my desk. “It's extortion, coercion. You're a lawyer, Zinn. The ref-erence to his daughter is a blatant threat. You came in here to deal, Mr. Zinn. Here it is: This doesn't get out. The name on these e-mails stays between us. But we send in our own team to ascertain where they originated from.”
    “I understand.” The lawyer nodded sheepishly, handing over the file.
    I skimmed over the e-mail addresses. Footsy123@ hotmail.com. [email protected]. Both signed the same. August Spies. I turned to Jacobi. “What do you think, War-ren? Can we trace these?”
    “We already put them through our own investigation,” Zinn volunteered.
    “You traced them.” I looked up, shocked.
    “We're an e-traffic security company. All of them are free Internet providers. No user billing address. Nothing needed to open an account. You could go to the library, the airport, anywhere there's an open-access online terminal and open one yourself. This one was sent from a kiosk at the Oakland airport. This one from a Kinko's near Berkeley on University. These two, from the public library. They're untraceable.”
    I figured Zinn knew his stuff and was right, but one thing did jump out at me. The Kinko's, the library, the real Wendy Raymore's apartment.
    “We may not know who they are, but we know where they are.”
    “The People's Republic of Berkeley,” Jacobi said, and sniffed. “Well, I'll be.”

Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Chapter 29
    I