Chapter 54
“No,” Rick said. “I can’t do a jail cell.”
Michelle burst into tears. “Don’t be an asshole, baby. You can’t leave me.”
“I’m leaving you either way. What are you going to do? Wait for me?”
“Yes!”
“We both know that’s not true. You’ll find somebody else. Somebody who can make you happy.”
“You make me happy,” she sobbed.
“No. I don’t. I’ve never been good for you.” Rick looked at me. “Just do me a favor. Get the people who killed me.”
“That will be a lot easier if you stay alive,” I said.
I tried to change his mind, but Rick did not want to spend time in a 6x8.
I didn't blame him. I didn't have a full backstory on Rick yet, but there may have been more than one reason why he didn't want to go to prison. He’d be an easy target.
Maybe he knew there was a shank waiting for him in the yard.
I gave his girlfriend my card in case Rick had a change of heart. But we wouldn’t have another opportunity even if he did. Dr. Parker had looked the other way once. He wouldn't do it again.
We left and headed back to the station. I logged Rick’s cell phone into evidence and had Crenshaw make a clone of the data.
He saved it to an external hard drive. Crenshaw was good, but Piper and Isabella were on a completely different level.
I gave him the passcode to the phone and asked him to see what he could find out about the crypto wallet that transferred money to Rick.
JD and I headed back to the Avventura, and I enlisted Piper to find out as much as she could about the crypto wallet that sent the money to Rick.
I had the wallet address. We just needed to find out who owned it.
I sent the information to Isabella as well.
Between the three of them, I hoped we’d catch a break.
I contacted the sheriff. He informed the feds we had their suspect in custody. Jack had Rick’s confession on video. For them, the case would be open and shut. End of story. The Chinese would get a speedy resolution to the crime, but they wouldn’t get Zheng’s laptop back anytime soon, if ever.
I found Kara and asked, “Did you leave the sliding glass door unlocked when you left the Pineapple Cabana?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Were you told to leave it open?”
“Those doors can only be locked from the inside. I didn’t have a choice. But the instructions were to leave through the patio and leave it unlocked.”
“That didn’t strike you as odd?”
“I didn’t think about it. I never considered someone was going to kill Zheng.”
My eyes narrowed at her, looking for hints of deception.
“Aren’t we past this?”
I held my gaze.
“What about Rick? What does he say?”
I told her.
“He doesn’t look so good.”
“Yeah, well, he refused treatment.”
Kara cringed. “You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t know Yan Zheng was going to be killed.”
“Would you have taken the job if you knew?”
“So, now we’re into hypotheticals?” she asked, growing irritated.
I stared at her and said nothing.
“I don’t know what I would have done. A few days ago, I would have said money is money. Now, I would walk away from the whole thing. Hindsight is 20-20. It’s not really a fair question, is it?”
“I guess not.” I paused. “Looks like Rick was paid from a different crypto wallet than you were,” I said.
Her brow wrinkled. “Different employers?”
“Not sure. Maybe a mistake. It’s not uncommon to have multiple wallets. Maybe the funds were transferred from the wrong account. Maybe it was done on purpose so the two wouldn’t look connected.”
My phone buzzed with a call from Crenshaw. I swiped the screen and held the phone to my ear. “Tell me something good.”
"I can’t tell you if it's good or bad, but it's interesting," Crenshaw said.
"Did you find anything about the crypto wallet?"
"No. Not yet. Something else. The Wentworth case. There's something off about it.”
"The whole thing’s felt off since the beginning.”
"We know the hack originated from Elias's IP address at his Stingray Bay house. A boneheaded move, if you ask me. But here's the kicker. Each device has a unique MAC address—Media Access Control. It's an identifier. Like a fingerprint for the machine."
"I'm aware."
"None of the devices that were confiscated from Elias’s house or office match the MAC address used to hack into the cryogenics lab."
That piqued my curiosity.
Crenshaw asked, "Do you think he could have purchased a burner laptop, thinking that might offer him some protection?”
“I think Elias is smarter than that. He had to know that hacking a system from his IP was risky.”
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”
"Someone piggybacked on his network,” I said. “They wanted to set him up. Make it look like he hacked the server. Certainly threw us off the trail for long enough."
"I'm sure you have a few ideas about who might be behind that.”
"I do." I thanked him for the information and ended the call.
All the pieces were starting to come together. I figured somebody pulled up to the curb in front of Elias's mansion, hacked into his network, then hacked the cryogenics lab—just like when Piper and I connected to the Wi-Fi at the coffee shop to hack Zonatrex.
Somebody wanted us to trace it back to Elias.
They made it just difficult enough, but not impossible. Unfortunately for them, they overlooked the discrepancies in the MAC addresses. Maybe they thought we were stupid.
I found JD and filled him in. We headed back to Stingray Bay. Jack parked at the curb, and we hopped out and hustled up the walkway. I banged on the door to Elias’s mansion.
His wife moved down the foyer a moment later and pulled open the door. Her angry eyes flicked between the two of us. "What do you want?”
"I think I might be able to prove your husband is not guilty of murder," I said.
She lifted a surprised brow.
I didn't think we’d have a problem obtaining a new warrant, but that wouldn’t be necessary after I explained the situation to Mrs. Thorne. It didn't take too much convincing to get her to agree to export the footage from the video doorbell the night of the murder.