“I’ll call him in,” Debbie said and left.
Sean went back to Harper’s office. It was twice the size, with a second workstation in the corner and an adjoining conference room. There were photos of Harper and his wife, Harper and his daughter, Harper and horses, awards, his degrees, as well as a comfortable couch. The room was warm and inviting, but also said conservative and professional. Why hadn’t he moved all the files into the larger, more comfortable space? Why work at a colleague’s desk?
Sean skimmed through Harper’s emails. He’d exchanged several emails with Terry related to the files, mostly asking questions about what she’d done. Nothing that pointed to a crime or even a suspicion of a crime.
Sean leaned back in Harper’s chair and closed his eyes, ignoring Gregor’s unspoken questions.
Harper hadn’t wanted to work in this office. He’d changed his habits and worked in Terry’s office, at the same time that his behavior had changed, according to his admin. Sean wished he could call Lucy and ask if she had confirmed with his family or friends that Harper’s personal behavior had changed at the same time as his office behavior.
Clear change in behavior. Preoccupied. Didn’t use his own computer. Which meant he didn’t use his phone …
Sean sat up and typed rapidly on Harper’s computer.
“What?” Gregor asked.
Sean didn’t answer right away. He accessed HWI internal phone records and located Harper’s phone number.
Harper hadn’t taken any calls at his desk for four weeks. No ingoing or outgoing. Sean checked Terry’s extension—it had been used consistently during the time Harper was using her office. Which meant that even when he wasn’t working on the BLM audit he wasn’t using his phone or his computer.
Sean unplugged the phone from the wall. He then took his tool set from his computer case, unscrewed the handset, and carefully pulled it apart.
He turned it around so Gregor could see the bug in the mouthpiece. “He knew this was here,” Sean said. “That’s why he used Terry’s office.”
Sean inspected the bug carefully because he didn’t want to damage it. “Expensive. Completely undetectable unless it’s activated, and it’s activated only when he’s on the phone. This is high quality. Used by governments or well-financed criminals.”
“Can you trace it?”
“They may have turned off the receiver, which means there’s no way to trace it. And depending on how it was initially set up, I don’t know that it’s traceable at all. Unless we can get prints off the bug or trace the serial number. If I were the one bugging an office, they’d never trace the number back to me. Still—if it’s possible, I can do it. I need to get some equipment, and then I want your permission to bring in the FBI.”
“Of course. They’re investigating Harper’s murder. This may be connected.”
There were a couple of reasons Sean wanted the FBI involved, though he’d never consider bringing them in if Lucy wasn’t an agent. He wanted to leak information and give whoever had bugged Harper’s phone actionable intelligence—but nothing that would jeopardize the case.
He said to Gregor, “This only works if there are no other bugs in here, otherwise they already know our plan.”
“I already sent a message to the head of IT to sweep the entire building,” Gregor said. “Why didn’t Harper tell me about the bug?” He was both angry and hurt that his boss hadn’t trusted him, and not a little furious that someone had bugged the phone.
Sean was wondering the same thing. Why had Harper been so secretive? Did he think someone inside HWI had betrayed him? The first person Sean had cleared was Gregor Smith himself—as head of security, he would have the most access. But so far, he was clean. Sean would dig deeper into his finances, but Sean didn’t think Gregor was corrupt.
Sean said, “The big question for me is—how did Harper know the bug was here in the first place? And even if he didn’t want anyone to know, why didn’t he destroy it himself?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Brad Donnelly stood with his SAPD liaison, Sergeant Jerry Fielding, next to the tactical van outside the crime scene. The dilapidated strip mall had once housed a video rental store, a small grocery, and a Mexican restaurant. Now it was completely boarded up. The fence that had once surrounded the long, narrow building had been torn down. Heaps of jagged chain-link fencing and barbed wire lay tangled on the broken cement. Weeds grew through the holes in the metal, a testament to how long it had been abandoned. Gang graffiti covered the sagging structure.